The tools revealed by Apple to monitor and report images of child sexual exploitation have revived the debate over encryption, confidentiality and data protection.
This comes amid fear and concern among some that governments and hackers will exploit these new technologies.
For iPhone and iPad manufacturers, the initiative aims to protect younger users from network stalkers.
But this constitutes, in particular, a major detail for the company, which was resolutely confronting any attempts to circumvent its encryption system in order to access private conversations through its devices.
In a technical note, Apple confirmed that one of the problematic image detection tools, developed by cryptographic experts, is "secure and expressly designed to preserve user privacy."
This tool allows comparing images uploaded to the user's iCloud server with those stored in a file managed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children without direct access to the image.
But crypto and privacy experts fear that this tool can be used for other purposes.
"This kind of tool can be very useful for finding child pornography on people's phones," Johns Hopkins cryptologist Matthew Green wrote on Twitter. "But imagine what would happen if this tool was in the hands of an authoritarian government?"
Also, experts fear that another tool developed by Apple that allows scanning images received by minors or sent through the messaging service “iMessage”, the first step towards opening “backdoors” in iPhone devices that can be used by hackers. or governments.
"There will be tremendous pressure on Apple from governments around the world to expand this detection capacity to other types of 'bad content'," Matt Blaze, a researcher in informatics and cryptocurrency at Georgetown University, said on Twitter. to exploit it."
He pointed out that "Apple" will not only check the data on its servers, but also those stored in the phone itself. Therefore, "the group may be able to see all of your data."
These new tools will be available in the United States along with operating system updates for various Apple-branded devices.
John Clark, an official at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said Apple's new child protections "change the equation." It has become a reality after years of tension between technology giants and the authorities.
Apple categorically refused to help police access the encrypted mobile phone content of one of the perpetrators of the attack that killed 14 people in late 2015 in San Bernardino, California.
For FBI officials, end-to-end encryption that limits readability to sender and receiver effectively protects criminals and terrorists, even when authorities have a search warrant.
Facebook is currently studying a way to use artificial intelligence to analyze the content of messages without decrypting them, according to The Information.
On the other hand, Will Cathcart, head of the “WhatsApp” application that was bought by Facebook, saw that “Apple” adopts a “bad approach that violates the privacy of people all over the world.”
He wrote on Twitter Friday that this system "can record all the private photos on your phone, these are not confidential."
Encryption advocates say authorities already have access to a full set of "digital traces" to track malicious activity, and that any decryption tool could be exploited by malicious actors.
As for James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he considered that Apple's new tools make it possible to identify problematic content without having to send it directly to the authorities.
This will undoubtedly not be enough in the eyes of government agencies.
"Apple has made every effort to strike a balance between public safety and privacy, but this is arguably not enough for some of the more difficult security concerns," Lewis said.
