After years of saying they would never create a backdoor into their iOS devices, Apple has flipped and announced that they’re doing just that. This means that the security and privacy of our images on all our Apple iOS devices will soon be fundamentally compromised. If Apple’s algorithms detect a pattern in our data they don’t like, they’ll unlock our privacy and hand our images directly over to law enforcement.
But if we can mount enough pressure, we might be able to convince Apple to not go through with this disastrous change. Sign the petition telling Apple to uphold their privacy promise!
For years, Apple rejected government pressure to break encryption and promised us that the data on our iOS devices is secure.1 They even built their brand promising to protect our privacy, saying that a permanent backdoor into their devices would be “too dangerous to create” — but now they’re doing exactly that, beginning in the US, and with other countries expected to follow.2, 3
If they go through with this, they’ll be betraying their promises to customers and threatening the safety and security of everyone who uses their devices.
Apple needs to feel the heat from their customers now, with a clear message that this change is dangerous and unwanted. They’re justifying this change as an attempt to protect children online, and that’s a worthy goal. But the only reason governments aren’t surveilling our phone images right now for terrorism, protest and anything else they care to is NOT that they haven’t tried — it was that it was never technologically possible before now. But all that is about to change.
Technology experts are in agreement that creating this permanent backdoor unleashes that technical capacity, opening the door for them to surveil everything on our phones, in our iCloud accounts, and that we receive through iMessage.4, 5 With this change, it’s only a matter of time before our privacy and security are completely gone.
We can’t afford to wait until this change has been rolled out in the new iOS 15 update — we need to stop Apple from rolling it out NOW. Sign the petition now telling Apple to not go through with creating a permanent backdoor!
Thanks for all you do,
Bryan at OpenMedia
Sources
- Apple refuses government’s request to unlock Pensacola shooting suspect’s iPhones – CNBC
- A message to our customers – Apple
- Expanded protections for children, CSAM detection – Apple
- Apple’s plan to “think different” about encryption opens a backdoor to your private life – Electronic Frontier Foundation
- WhatsApp and privacy experts sound alarm about privacy implications of new Apple photo scanning feature – The Independent