An organization called Fight for the Future is organizing protests in front of some Apple Stores in response to Apple's proposed feature of scanning a user's photos for child porn.
The following is the official statement:
On August 5, 2021 Apple announced that its next iOS update will include new surveillance features that will scan all photos uploaded to iCloud Photos and all iMessage images sent or received by child accounts. This announcement, which the company claims is meant to prevent child exploitation, creates a backdoor that actually endangers children, threatens human rights, will especially impact marginalized people, and destroys privacy and security on Apple devices.
There is no question that child abuse is a crisis that needs to be addressed, but broad surveilance of peoples’ devices is not the solution. This sort of monitoring is a shocking departure from Apple’s former commitment to privacy and security for its users. Because these scans happen on the devices themselves, they would bypass end-to-end encryption and establish a new precedent for law enforcement to access information on personal devices. Apple is the only major tech company to take this incredibly dangerous step—but once they do, others may be forced to follow…
There is still time to stop this — Apple could reverse course and decide to not push this update. Sign the petition and email Apple leadership to tell them to drop these plans and recommit to never opening any sort of backdoor to monitor our communications.
