Mayank Varia and Riana Pfefferkorn on Apple's Decision to Scan for Child Exploitation Material
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 August 2021
⏱️ 63 minutes
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Summary
Two of the biggest controversies in tech are how to stop the spread of child pornography and other exploitation material, and whether encryption prevents legitimate law enforcement investigations. In an announcement last week, Apple dropped a bomb into both of these debates.
Apple announced that future versions of its iPhone operating system would scan photos its users post to the cloud and automatically detect if those photos contain child exploitation material. If so, Apple would notify the government. While many in law enforcement and in organizations devoted to child safety have hailed Apple's announcement, it has proven hugely controversial among many technologists, security researchers and digital civil society advocates. They worry that Apple’s system will harm privacy and civil rights, especially if governments demand that it be used to scan for content other than child exploitation. To help make sense of all of this, Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Mayank Varia, a cryptographer at Boston University, and Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory.
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| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:33.9 | The thing that I think Apple might be thinking is that this is going to get the government |
| 0:37.2 | off their backs. |
| 0:38.2 | Look, we gave you what you want. |
| 0:39.6 | Now, like, this is the thing that you keep hammering on us about. |
| 0:42.5 | Now we've done it. |
| 0:43.5 | Go away. |
| 0:44.5 | It's not. |
| 0:45.5 | Now it's going to be, they're all going to be wanting one. |
| 0:46.8 | And it's not, as I said, going to be limited to CSAM. |
| 0:49.8 | So I don't think Apple has succeeded in deflecting attention away. |
| 0:53.9 | Even though there is also now attention being paid to the Facebooks and the Google's |
| 0:57.6 | and the signals of the world, it's going to be paid on Apple too and the demand is going |
| 1:02.5 | to be to do more and more and more. |
| 1:04.7 | You can't give an inch without a mile being snatched away. |
| 1:07.7 | I'm Alan Rosenstein and this is the LawFair podcast, August 13, 2021. |
| 1:16.3 | Two of the biggest controversies in tech are how to stop the spread of child pornography |
| 1:20.7 | and other exploitation material. |
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