Apple announced today that it would “take additional time over the coming months to collect input and make improvements” to a program that will weaken privacy and security on iPhones and other products. EFF is pleased Apple is now listening to the concerns of customers, researchers, civil liberties organizations, human rights activists, LGBTQ people, youth representatives, and other groups, about the dangers posed by its phone scanning tools. But the company must go further than just listening, and drop its plans to put a backdoor into its encryption entirely.

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TELL APPLE: DON'T SCAN OUR PHONES

The features Apple announced a month ago, intending to help protect children, would create an infrastructure that is all too easy to redirect to greater surveillance and censorship. These features would create an enormous danger to iPhone users’ privacy and security, offering authoritarian governments a new mass surveillance system to spy on citizens. They also put already vulnerable kids at risk, especially LGBTQ youth, and create serious potential for danger to children in abusive households.

The responses to Apple’s plans have been damning: over 90 organizations across the globe have urged the company not to implement them, for fear that they would lead to the censoring of protected speech, threaten the privacy and security of people around the world, and have disastrous consequences for many children. This week, EFF’s petition to Apple demanding they abandon their plans reached 25,000 signatures. This is in addition to other petitions by groups such as Fight for the Future and OpenMedia, totaling well over 50,000 signatures. The enormous coalition that has spoken out will continue to demand that user phones—both their messages and their photos—be protected, and that the company maintain its promise to provide real privacy to its users. 

Further Reading: 

• Apple's Plan to "Think Different" About Encryption Opens a Backdoor to Your Private Life
• If You Build It, They Will Come: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship Around the World
• How LGBTQ+ Content is Censored Under the Guise of "Sexually Explicit"
• EFF Joins Global Coalition Asking Apple CEO Tim Cook to Stop Phone-Scanning
• Apple’s Plan to Scan Photos in Messages Turns Young People Into Privacy Pawns
  
• Don’t Stop Now: Join EFF, Fight for the Future at Apple Protests Nationwide
• Why EFF Flew a Plane Over Apple's Headquarters