Apple also protests against British bill on scanning for child pornography

Apple is opposing an upcoming law from the British government. This would oblige messaging services to scan messages looking for child abuse content. WhatsApp and Signal have been protesting for some time.

Apple calls out in a statement to the BBC to amend the law, which stipulates that messaging services must scan for child abuse material. “End-to-end encryption is an essential function that protects the privacy of journalists, human rights activists and diplomats. It also helps ordinary citizens protect themselves from surveillance, identity theft, fraud and data breaches. The Online Safety Bill poses a serious threat to these protections and could put British citizens at even greater risk. Apple urges the government to amend the bill to protect strong end-to-end encryption for the benefit of all.”

There has already been resistance from WhatsApp and Signal, among others. This happened with an open letter to the United Kingdom government. Even then, an official responded that the proposal did not necessarily mean the end of end-to-end encryption. “The bill does not ban end-to-end encryption, and it will not require services to weaken encryption.” The bill does oblige the services to automatically scan messages for child abuse material. Apple wanted to put that system in iOS 15 with a scan on the phone itself, but withdrew that plan after a lot of internal and external criticism of the plan. Many chat platforms use end-to-end encryption to secure chats, so that people can communicate safely with each other.