The debate about Apple’s new effort began on Twitter the night before the announcement, when security experts began tweeting about a rumoured client-side scanner.

“Regardless of what Apple’s long term plans are, they’ve sent a very clear signal,” wrote Matthew Green, an associate professor of computer science at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, on Twitter.

“In their (very influential) opinion, it is safe to build systems that scan users’ phones for prohibited content. That’s the message they’re sending to governments, competing services, China, you.”

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The new initiative won’t be limited to just photos. It will also scan messages sent using Apple’s iMessage service for text and photos that are inappropriate for minors. If an underage user receives, for instance, a photo identified as sexually explicit, it will appear to be blurred and the minor may be warned that if they click on the photo, their parents will be notified. Children may also be warned if they attempt to send a sexually explicit image.

In its response, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said Apple’s iMessage is less secure because of the new changes.

“A secure messaging system is a system where no one but the user and their intended recipients can read the messages, or otherwise analyse their contents to infer what they are talking about,” it wrote.

The Washington Post

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