Apple has responded to child safety group Heat Initiative, outlining its reasons for abandoning the development of its iCloud photo-scanning tool for detecting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on the platform. Instead, Apple is focusing on a set of on-device tools and resources for users known collectively as Communication Safety features. The company's response to Heat Initiative offers a rare look at its broader views on creating mechanisms to circumvent user privacy protections, such as encryption in order to monitor data. Apple's director of user privacy and child safety, Erik Neuenschwander, wrote in the company's response seen by WIRED that scanning every user's privately stored iCloud data would create new threat vectors for data thieves to find and exploit and could open the door for bulk surveillance. Heat Initiative is organising a campaign to demand that Apple "detect, report, and remove" child sexual abuse material from iCloud and offer more tools for users to report CSAM to the company.
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