Apple unveiled plans to scan U.S. iPhones for images of child s.e.xual abuse, drawing applause from child protection groups but raising concern among some security researchers that the system could be misused by governments looking to surveil their citizens.
Apple said its messaging app will use on-device machine learning to warn about sensitive content without making private communications readable by the company. The tool Apple calls “neuralMatch” will detect known images of child sexual abuse without decrypting people’s messages. If it finds a match, the image will be reviewed by a human who can notify law enforcement if necessary.
But researchers say the tool could be put to other purposes such as government surveillance of dissidents or protesters.
Matthew Green of Johns Hopkins, a top cryptography researcher, was concerned that it could be used to frame innocent people by sending them harmless but malicious images designed to appear as matches for child porn, fooling Apple’s algorithm and alerting law enforcement – essentially framing people. “Researchers have been able to do this pretty easily,” he said.
Apple believes it pulled off that feat with technology that it developed in consultation with several prominent cryptographers, including Stanford University professor Dan Boneh, whose work in the field has won a Turing Award, often called technology’s version of the Nobel Prize.
The computer scientist who more than a decade ago invented PhotoDNA, the technology used by law enforcement to identify child pornography online, acknowledged the potential for abuse of Apple’s system but said it was far outweighed by the imperative of battling child s.e.xual abuse.
In other news – Mohale is not a victim, he also beat me up – Somizi breaks his silence on abuse allegations
Mzansi star Somizi Mhlongo has broken his silence about his marriage woes and the abuse allegations levelled against him by his estranged husband Mohale Motaung.
In a statement issued on Instagram, Somizi has addressed the abuse allegations that popped up earlier this week when a local publication reported that Mohale allegedly made the claims in an interview with producers of the reality show Living the Dream with Somizi. Learn more
Source: usatoday
