Finally Apple will not fight against child pornography, but why?

Critics will ultimately have Apple back down. There is no question for the American giant to ruin its reputation in terms of respect for privacy. While she had planned to launch a new feature on iOS aimed at combating child pornography, Apple finally canceled everything.

In a brief press release, the company announces that it will postpone the implementation of this feature for several months, the time for it to rework its copy. She writes :

Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers, and others, we’ve decided to take extra time in the coming months to gather feedback and make improvements before launching these protection features. children of crucial importance.

Three anti-child pornography features deemed too intrusive

With the new version of iOS, Apple had planned to integrate three new features aimed at combating child pornography. The first is to warn a child using the application Messages that shared content is potentially sensitive and / or of a sexual nature. The second is to enrich Siri with links in order to report cases of sexual exploitation of minors. The latest finds child pornography images in the iCloud library.

It is this latest feature that has drawn heavy criticism after Apple’s announcements. Defenders of freedoms as well as security experts explained that if Apple had access to the iCloud library to locate such content, eShe was also quite able to analyze other content. Abusive surveillance that does not respect the privacy of users believe many associations.

After a first round of criticism, Craig Federighi explained in mid-August that Apple had poorly communicated. “With hindsight, the announcement of these two functions at the same time (protection in Messages and recognition of photos) would indeed create confusion” he admitted.

But the framework of Apple did not announce the cancellation of these features so far. “We who see ourselves as privacy leaders believe that what we are doing here is cutting edge.” he boasted. In the end, pressure from privacy advocates and the media got the better of Apple. Yet the company already scans user emails with the same goal of protecting children.

The happiness of some causing the misfortune of others, an executive of the NSPCC (British association for the protection of children) for whom Apple had “A proportionate approach” stated that this decision was “Incredibly disappointing ». It remains to be seen now what Apple intends to do to find the right balance. See you in a few months.