Apple said on Friday it would take more time to collect feedback and improve the proposed child safety features after criticism of the privacy system and other reasons both inside and outside the company. Apple’s promise last month to check cellphones and US customer computers for images of child sex harassment trigger a global counterattack from various rights groups, with employees also criticized the plan internally. Critics argue that these features can be exploited by the repressive government who want to find other material for sensors or arrests and also impossible for researchers outside to determine whether Apple only examines a set of on-small content content.
Apple was against that it would allow security researchers to verify their claims, but the company on Friday said it would take more time to make changes to the system. “Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers and others, we have decided to take extra time for the coming months to gather input and make improvements before releasing this very important child safety feature,” the company said in a statement on Friday . Matthew Green, a Cybersecurity researcher at Johns Hopkins University who has criticized Apple’s move, said Apple’s move was “promising.”
Green said on Twitter that Apple must be “clear about why you scan and what you scan. Go from the scanning of anything (but email attachments) to scan the personal photo library everyone is a very large delta. You need to justify the escalation like this. “
Apple has played defense on plans for weeks, and has offered a series of explanations and documents to show that the risk of false detection is low. Plan to launch features for iPhone, iPad, and Mac with software updates later this year in the United States.