WhatsApp: Apple's plan to scan for child abuse pics is privacy setback

‘A setback for people’s privacy all over the world’: WhatsApp joins avalanche of criticism of Apple’s plan to scan iPhones for images of child abuse and send them to police after an employee checks them

• WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart has slammed Apple’s plan to roll out new Child Safety features that scan user photos to find offending images
• Cathcart outlined his opposition in a series of tweets, saying Apple’s plan to combat child sexual abuse material is a step in the wrong direction
• Cathcart said it represented a ‘setback for people’s privacy all over the world’ 
• Apple said on Thursday it will scan US-based iPhones for images of child abuse 
• The move has drawn widespread criticism for rolling back on individual privacy 
• Messages app and iCloud photos will use on-device machine learning with a tool known as ‘neuralHash’ to look for sensitive content which can be reviewed 

Cathcart said:  

The head of WhatsApp tweeted a barrage of criticism on Friday against Apple over plans to automatically scan iPhones and cloud storage for images of child abuse.

It would see ‘flagged’ owners reported to the police after a company employee has looked at their photos.

But WhatsApp head Will Cathcart said the popular messaging app would not follow Apple’s strategy.

His criticism adds to a stream of criticism of Apple’s new system by privacy campaigners who say it is the start of an ‘infrastructure for surveillance and censorship.’

How Apple will scan your phone for ‘child abuse images’ – and send suspicious photos to a company employee who will check it before sending them to police 

The new image-monitoring feature is part of a series of tools heading to Apple mobile devices, according to the company. 

Here is how it works:

1.) User’s photos are compared with ‘fingerprints’ from America’s National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) from its database of child abuse videos and images that allow technology to detect them, stop them and report them to the authorities. 

Those images are translated into “hashes”, a type of code that can be “matched” to an image on an Apple device to see if it could be illegal.

2.) Before an iPhone or other Apple device uploads an image to iCloud, the ‘device creates a cryptographic safety voucher that encodes the match result. It also encrypts the image’s NeuralHash and a visual derivative. This voucher is uploaded to iCloud Photos along with the image.’   

3.) Apple’s ‘system ensures that the contents of the safety vouchers cannot be interpreted by Apple unless the iCloud Photos account crosses a threshold of known CSAM content,’ Apple has said.  

At the same time Apple’s texting app, Messages, will use machine learning to recognize and warn children and their parents when receiving or sending sexually explicit photos, the company said in the statement.

‘When receiving this type of content, the photo will be blurred and the child will be warned,’ Apple said.

‘As an additional precaution, the child can also be told that, to make sure they are safe, their parents will get a message if they do view it.’

Similar precautions are triggered if a child tries to send a sexually explicit photo, according to Apple.  Personal assistant Siri, meanwhile, will be taught to ‘intervene’ when users try to search topics related to child sexual abuse, according to Apple.

4.) Apple says that if their ‘voucher’ threshhold is crossed and the image is deemed suspicious, its staff ‘manually reviews all reports made to NCMEC to ensure reporting accuracy’

Users can ‘file an appeal to have their account reinstated’ if they believe it has been wrongly flagged. 

5.) If the image is a child sexual abuse image the NCMEC can report it to the authorities with a view to a prosecution.    

Cathcart said: ‘I think this is the wrong approach and a setback for people’s privacy all over the world.’

Apple’s system ‘can scan all the private photos on your phone — even photos you haven’t shared with anyone. That’s not privacy,’ he said.

‘People have asked if we’ll adopt this system for WhatsApp. The answer is no.’

Apple plans to roll out a system for checking photos for child abuse imagery on a country-by-country basis, depending on local laws, the company said on Friday.

A day earlier, Apple said it would implement a system that screens photos for such images before they are uploaded from iPhones in the United States to its iCloud storage.

Child safety groups praised Apple as it joined Facebook, Microsoft and Google in taking such measures.

But Apple’s photo check on the iPhone itself raised concerns that the company is probing into users’ devices in ways that could be exploited by governments. Many other technology companies check photos after they are uploaded to servers.

Apple has said that a human review process that acts as a backstop against government abuse, it added. The company will not pass reports from its photo checking system to law enforcement if the review finds no child abuse imagery. 

‘Child sexual abuse material and the abusers who traffic in it are repugnant, and everyone wants to see those abusers caught,’ tweeted WhatsApp’s chief Cathcart.

‘Instead of focusing on making it easy for people to report content that’s shared with them, Apple has built software that can scan all the private photos on your phone — even photos you haven’t shared with anyone. That’s not privacy. 

‘We’ve had personal computers for decades and there has never been a mandate to scan the private content of all desktops, laptops or phones globally for unlawful content. It’s not how technology built in free countries works,’ said Cathcart.

‘This is an Apple built and operated surveillance system that could very easily be used to scan private content for anything they or a government decides it wants to control. Countries where iPhones are sold will have different definitions on what is acceptable,’ he continued noting the approach led to more questions than answers.

‘Will this system be used in China? What content will they consider illegal there and how will we ever know? How will they manage requests from governments all around the world to add other types of content to the list for scanning? Can this scanning software running on your phone be error proof? Researchers have not been allowed to find out. Why not? How will we know how often mistakes are violating people’s privacy? What will happen when spyware companies find a way to exploit this software? Recent reporting showed the cost of vulnerabilities in iOS software as is. What happens if someone figures out how to exploit this new system?,’ Cathcart listed as concerning questions.   

‘There are so many problems with this approach, and it’s troubling to see them act without engaging experts that have long documented their technical and broader concerns with this.’ 

Cathcart outlined his opposition in a series of tweets, saying Apple’s plan to combat child sexual abuse material is a step in the wrong direction

This is how the system will work. Using ‘fingerprints’ from a CSAM database, these will be compared to pictures on the iPhone. Any match is then sent to Apple and after being reviewed again they will be sent to America’s National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Its Messages app will use on-device machine learning with a tool known as ‘neuralHash’ to look for sensitive content. In addition, iOS and iPadOS will ‘use new applications of cryptography to limit the spread of Child Sexual Abuse Material online’

Apple has said it will have limited access to the violating images which would be flagged to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), a nonprofit organization. 

Apple’s experts have also argued that they were not really going into people’s phones because data sent on its devices must clear multiple hurdles. 

For example, banned material is flagged by watchdog groups, and the identifiers are bundled into Apple’s operating systems worldwide, making them harder to manipulate.

Some experts said they had one reason to hope Apple had not truly changed direction in a fundamental way.

The company had been working to make iCloud backups end-to-end encrypted, meaning the company could not turn over readable versions of them to law enforcement. It dropped the project after the FBI objected.

The new image-monitoring feature is part of a series of tools heading to Apple mobile devices later this year.

Apple’s texting app, Messages, will also use machine learning to recognize and warn children and their parents when receiving or sending sexually explicit photos, the company said in the statement.

‘When receiving this type of content, the photo will be blurred and the child will be warned,’ Apple said.

‘Apple’s expanded protection for children is a game changer,’ said John Clark, president of the nonprofit NCMEC.

The move comes following years of standoffs involving technology firms and law enforcement.  

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