To maintain pressure on Apple, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) flew a banner against the company’s upcoming CSAM detection scanning system over Apple Park during the iPhone 13 event on September 14, 2021.
When the tech giant announced the Expanded Protections for Children which included a new scanning system for CSAM detection on users’ devices, EFF was one of the first digital privacy organizations to reject the feature and protest against it. Like other cybersecurity experts, EFF argues that the new scanning system will create a backdoor to breach iPhone’s security and jeopardize users’ privacy and security.
EFF reminds Apple not to “scan our Phones”
Apple has delayed the new child safety features which were planned to launch in the iOS 15 update because of strong criticism from experts, human rights organizations, journalists, and governments. However, the company still plans to release the new scanning and analyzing systems with improvements later this year. And that is what EFF is working to prevent.
EFF’s objective is to pressurize the tech giant into completely dropping the controversial features. Previously, the organization wrote that Apple “must go further than just listening, and drop its plans to put a backdoor into its encryption entirely” and delivered nearly 60,000 petitions to Apple against the feature on September 7. Ahead of the iPhone 13 event, it organized protests in Boston, Atlanta, Washington D.C., New York City, Portland (OR), and other major cities in the United States against upcoming scanning system. And on the day of the event, it flew a banner over the company’s headquarter that stating “Don’t Scan Our Phones!”
EFF argues that the tech giant can regain people’s trust by committing to cancel this “mass surveillance system” because privacy is not for sale.
We can’t let Apple’s disastrous phone-scanning idea fade into the background, only to be announced with minimal changes down the road. To make sure Apple is listening to our concerns, EFF turned to an old-school messaging system: aerial advertising.
