Apple may not be willing to unlock iPhones at the request of law enforcement, but a new warrant shows the tech giant is joining forces with officials in other ways.
The document, obtained by Forbes, reveals the firm’s system is intercepting and checking user’s emails for illegal material, with a focus on child sexual abuse.
Apple’s systems are using ‘hashes’ to identify photos and videos in message that may contain the illicit content, which are then flagged and quarantined for further investigation.
If the email in question is found to have illegal material it is sent over to authorities – usually the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
Forbes notes that it is not the staff that is sifting through emails, but a system that uses the same technology as Facebook, Twitter and Google employ to locate child abusers.
The technology works by creating a unique fingerprint, called a ‘hash’, for each image reported to the foundation, which are then passed on to internet companies to be automatically removed from the net.
Once an email has been targeted, a human employee will then look at the content of the file and analyze the message to determine if it should be handed over to the right authorities.
According to Forbes, Apple provided data about the user’s name, address, and mobile phone number to law enforcement, and the government further requested his emails, texts, messages, and other files stored on his iCloud.
‘When we intercept the email with suspected images, they do not go to the intended recipient,’ reads the employees comments in the warrant, which was filed in Seattle this week.
‘All seven emails and images were the same, as was the recipient email address.’
‘The other email contained 4 images which were different than the 12 previously mentioned.’
‘The intended recipient was the same.’
‘I suspect what happened was he was sending these images to himself and when they didn’t deliver, he sent them again repeatedly.
Either that or he got word from the recipient that they did not get delivered.’
The Apple employee then examined each of these images of suspected child pornography, according to the special agent at the Homeland Security Investigations unit.
The uncovered warrant shows that Apple is willing to join forces with officials, although it has pushed back in other ways in the past.
Last month, President Donald Trump accused Apple of refusing to unlock iPhones used by criminals one day after his attorney general demanded that the company help FBI investigators gain access to devices used by the gunman in a mass shooting at a Florida Navy base.
‘We are helping Apple all of the time on TRADE and so many other issues, and yet they refuse to unlock phones used by killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements,’ Trump wrote on Twitter Tuesday.
‘They will have to step up to the plate and help our great Country, NOW!’
The tweet came on the heels of US Attorney General William Barr’s call for Apple to cooperate with the FBI – which has been struggling to get past the encryption on two iPhones belonging to Saudi military trainee Mohammed Alshamrani.
Another instance occurred in 2016, when the tech giant refused to unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters, claiming it would undermine encryption by creating a backdoor that could potentially be used on other future devices.
Source: Dailymail
