SAN FRANCISCO: Apple on Friday defended new child protection features that would check images uploaded to its cloud storage and on its messaging platform, rejecting concerns the updates pose threats to privacy.
"We can see that it's been widely misunderstood," the US tech giant's software chief Craig Federighi said of the update rollout in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Friday.
Last week, Apple unveiled two features to debut on iPads and iPhones in the United States.
One can identify child sexual abuse images uploaded to its iCloud storage, while the other uses machine learning to recognize and warn children and their parents when receiving or sending sexually explicit photos on Apple's texting app, Messages, the company said in the statement.
Federighi said the new tools do not make Apple's systems and devices less secure or confidential.
"We wanted to be able to spot such photos in the cloud without looking at people's photos," he said, adding Apple wanted to "offer this kind of capability... in a way that is much, much more private than anything that's been done in this area before."
The company has also posted detailed explanations of the new features, saying in a technical paper that the technology, developed by cryptographic experts, "is secure, and is expressly designed to preserve user privacy."
The company said it will have limited access to any violating images, which would be flagged to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a nonprofit organization.
In a briefing on Friday, Apple explained it would rely on trusted groups in multiple countries to determine what images to look out for to make sure searches weren't being manipulated for other purposes.
It underscored that only images uploaded to iCloud are checked, with the system scanning for a digital version of a fingerprint that matches known child sex abuse images without seeing pictures.
Encryption and privacy specialists have said the tool could be exploited for other purposes, potentially opening a door to mass surveillance.
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