Apple recently announced that they’re going to scan U.S. iPhones for images of child sexual abuse, “drawing applause from child protection groups but raising concern among some security researchers that the system could be misused, including by governments looking to surveil their citizens,” according to Yahoo News.  

Apple is all about protecting children, as we well know. After all, Apple knew a supplier was using child labor but took 3 years to fully cut ties, despite the company’s promises to hold itself to the ‘highest standards,’ report says. “Ten former members of Apple’s supplier responsibility team (said) the company has refused or has been slow to stop doing business with suppliers that repeatedly violate its labor policies when doing so would hurt its profits.”  

So, obviously Apple is not driven by protecting children, although claiming so does tend to pull at the heartstrings and move people to quickly surrender yet another aspect of their privacy/allow surveillance. As Matthew Green, a top cryptography researcher at Johns Hopkins University, pointed out in the Yahoo piece, “abuses could include government surveillance of dissidents or protesters…”What happens when the Chinese government says, ‘Here is a list of files that we want you to scan for,’” Green asked. “Does Apple say no? I hope they say no, but their technology won’t say no.”  

Interestingly, it wasn’t all that long ago that Tim Cook says Apple’s refusal to unlock iPhone for FBI is a ‘civil liberties’ issue. “Apple boss Tim Cook told his employees…that the company’s refusal to cooperate with a US government to unlock an iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the two shooters in the San Bernardino attack, was a defense of civil liberties,” The Guardian reported back in 2016. Wrote Inc of the company’s decision back then: Apple Won’t Help the FBI Unlock a Terrorist’s iPhone. Here’s Why It Shouldn’t. “More than fighting terrorism is at stake when we start forcing tech companies to give the government access to our encrypted devices.”  

Of course, this is different. As Yahoo noted, “The detection system will only flag images that are already in the…database of known child pornography. Parents snapping innocent photos of a child in the bath presumably need not worry. But researchers say the matching tool — which doesn’t “see” such images, just mathematical “fingerprints” that represent them — could be put to more nefarious purposes. Researchers have already proven that they can fool the algorithm.  

Said Edward Snowden: @Snowden  Aug 5

No matter how well-intentioned, @Apple is rolling out mass surveillance to the entire world with this. Make no mistake: if they can scan for kiddie porn today, they can scan for anything tomorrow. They turned a trillion dollars of devices into iNarcs—*without asking.*  

How often have we witnessed tech give us one set of assurances, then alter their terms of service (and while we’re here, can we just call it ‘terms of servitude’ already and be done with it…)? Remember when Whatsapp founder Jan Koum left Facebook (which had acquired Whatsapp for $19+B) after Facebook broke its agreement with Koum about not scraping personal data and weakened Whatsapp’s encryption? Facebook changing policies? Shocker!  

This announcement from Apple is simply the latest move towards the tech cabal’s full spectrum dominance, as we reported last week. This is nothing new: it just seems to be barreling there at accelerated speeds these days. It was not too long ago that we learned that Apple Reportedly Storing Over 8 Million Terabytes of iCloud Data on Google Servers – and in the Amazon cloud as well.

And heads up: Apple will be tracking across all devices as soon as the next upgrade/iOS release.

“Apple is setting a precedent, and once that door is open, it’s that much harder to close it,” said Gizmodo. ““Regardless of what Apple’s long term plans are, they’ve sent a very clear signal. In their (very influential) opinion, it is safe to build systems that scan users’ phones for prohibited content,” Green writes. “That’s the message they’re sending to governments, competing services, China, you.””  

Apple is not the same company it was under Steve Jobs and if you’re under any illusion that they’re still the company that will guard your privacy and not capitulate to the directives du jour, time to think different. Onward and forward.