Apple has announced that they are going to delay their child protection measures after they received heavy criticism over privacy concerns.
Apple had already offered a number of explanations and documents that show that the risks of false detection were extremely low.
On Friday, Apple said that they are going to take more time to collect feedback so they could improve the proposed child safety measures.
They are doing this after receiving criticism of the system on privacy and other grounds, which includes inside and outside of the company.
Last month, Apple said that they are going to check US customer phones and computers for child sex abuse images.
This announcement sparked a global backlash from a wide range of right groups.
Employees of Apple, yes their own kind, also criticized the plan internally, said a number of reports on the internet.
Critics said that the feature could be exploited by repressive governments that are looking to find other material for censorship or arrests.
They also said that it would be impossible for outside researchers to determine if Apple was only checking a small set of content on the device that it checked out.
On Friday, Apple released a statement where they countered that they are going to allow security researchers to verify their claims.
Also in that statement, they said that they would take more time to make some changes into the system.
They added:
Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers and others, we have decided to take additional time over the coming months to collect input and make improvements before releasing these critically important child safety features.
Matthew Green, a cybersecurity researcher at Johns Hopkins University had recently criticized the move of Apple. However, they have also said that the move of the company is promising.
On Twitter, Green said that the company should be clear about why they are scanning and what they are scanning.
Green added:
Going from scanning nothing (but email attachments) to scanning everyone’s private photo library was an enormous delta. You need to justify escalations like this.
In a statement Apple released to The Verge, they said:
Last month we announced plans for features intended to help protect children from predators who use communication tools to recruit and exploit them, and limit the spread of Child Sexual Abuse Material. Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers and others, we have decided to take additional time over the coming months to collect input and make improvements before releasing these critically important child safety features.
Despite playing the defense game, a lot of people are still not satisfied with the company’s plans.
A lot of people have criticized the company for the new system saying that it could have created an on-device surveillance system.
They also said that it has violated the trust users had put in Apple for protecting on-device privacy.
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