Apple’s prying goes a step too far
If you have an iPhone or iPad, beware. Apple is in the final stages of giving itself the right — and the technology — to break into these devices and search your photo library.
So far, the project is aimed at American users. But the technology involved will work as effectively on Canadians.
Here’s what’s happening: At present, a number of tech companies, such as Google and Facebook, scan the cloud — a global network of servers storing uploaded data — for images that suggest child sexual abuse.
If incriminating photos or texts are found, they are taken down and the authorities are informed. That can lead to criminal prosecutions.
Apple is going further. The company will deploy an “on-device matching process” using algorithms developed for the purpose to scan photos being uploaded from iPhones and iPads to Apple’s cloud storage service.
If the process identifies multiple cases of something suspicious — an Apple vicepresident suggested roughly 30 instances as a threshold — a human being will take over and review the files. In effect, your guarantee of privacy is gone.
The technology designed to examine the files is known as “NeuralHash,” a prescient label. For there is no guarantee that what it finds is either authentic, or problematic.
Cryptography researchers have warned that the system is open to abuse. For example, innocent people could be framed by sending them images that appear innocuous, but trigger Apple’s algorithm.
And the algorithm itself is anything but infallible. What one company can design, another can hack into.
There is a legitimate concern. Child pornography is a serious and growing menace. It survives, in part, because the internet offers a form of anonymity.
If steps can be taken to identify the creators of these poisonous images, well and good. But if those steps expand to giving tech companies the right, with no due process or legal backing, to rummage through our communications devices, we’ve taken a dangerous step.
Apple assures us there are multiple safeguards in place. Perhaps there are.
But scarcely a week goes by without news that some hacker or ransom artist has broken into supposedly secure, encrypted databases and stolen the contents.
Moreover, this power to spy on us is being deployed by a private company.
It’s one thing if a law enforcement agency goes to court and obtains a search warrant to ransack your house. There are centuriesold judicial precepts that govern exactly what the police can and cannot do.
But there is no precedent I know of that entitles some Silicon Valley denizen to play Inspector Clouseau.
In one respect, this day was always coming. The temptation to invade our privacy was always there.
But this is something our federal government should put a stop to. Recently, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission proposed giving itself the power to regulate everything we put on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube.
Before we arrive at that form of intrusion, perhaps the CRTC could squeeze Apple until the pips squeak.