In Fighting Child Sex Abuse, Apple Worries Privacy Experts
In a plan Apple revealed last month to combat child sexual abuse, it introduced a software that scans people’s iPhone photos and compares them against a database of known child sexual abuse images. While child safety groups, abuse survivors, and law enforcement officials praised the move, computer scientists, civil-liberty lawyers, and privacy activists condemned this approach.
As these recent events show, privacy can be a double-edged sword. When it comes to tech, in the debate between privacy and security there are few easy answers: while we might aspire to protect and prevent, we subject ourselves to the same risk of being followed. As this animation attempts to visualize, nothing prevents the searchlight from eventually pointing at us.
Writer: Jack Nicas
Art director: Molly Bedford
Image, animation: Shira Inbar
Published in The New York Times Business
Art director: Molly Bedford
Image, animation: Shira Inbar
Published in The New York Times Business
