Last week, Apple announced its new system for fighting against child abuse, and it faced severe criticism, many citing privacy as the main issue with the new tech. Despite Apple addressing the concerns, AppleInsider now reports even Apple employees are expressing their discontentment with the new tech.
Some Apple employees have been speaking out against the new child abuse scanning tech
Apparently, there was some uproar among Apple employees on Slack who were expressing concerns with the new policy. The majority of them have reportedly raised concerns that the new scanning technology will undermine user privacy on Apple devices.
Since the unveiling of the new tech, more than 800 messages have been posted on Slack disagreeing with it or raising concerns. Reportedly, all this pushback has come from employees not directly working in the privacy or security departments of the company.
The system is a new technology meant to fight child abuse. It will be scanning iCloud photos for child abuse materials or CSAM, and will be comparing it to a hashed list of known images and materials. This raised concerns given the fact that such scanning or access could be used to scan users’ iCloud photos as a form of surveillance.
Earlier, some security and privacy experts made the point that the scanning system may give access to governments to surveil citizens. Apple has since addressed that concern, stating it will refuse any government the access or rights to scan for images other than CSAM-related.
