Technology | Child safety advocates disrupt Apple developers…
CUPERTINO — Around 35 protesters gathered at Apple headquarters Monday morning during the company’s annual global developers conference demanding the tech giant add a system to remove child sexual abuse content on iCloud — a venture Apple previously abandoned due to concerns over user privacy.
iCloud is a storage service that allows users to store and sync data across their devices, keeping information including photos, files, backups, passwords secure. The protesters — comprised mostly of child safety experts, advocates and survivors of childhood sexual abuse — say the service allows perpetrators and abusers to confidently store and share child exploitation materials without getting caught by authorities.
Apple had spent years attempting to design a system that would identify and remove such content on the iCloud. The company ultimately scrapped the idea in late 2023, in response to concerns from digital rights groups that a scanning system would compromise the privacy and security of all iCloud users.
Shortly after, the child advocacy group Heat Initiative began organizing a campaign to demand that the company continue to move forward with detecting and reporting such materials. According to the Intercept, Heat is backed by “dark-money donors,” and the group has declined to comment on its funding sources in the past. The initiative, along child safety groups Wired Human and the Brave Movement, organized Monday’s protest.
