Apple is about to start scanning iPhone users' devices for banned content, warns professor

Apple is about to start scanning iPhone users' devices for banned content, warns professor
For now it's child abuse material but the tech has mission creep written in.
Apple is about to announce a new technology for scanning individual users' iPhones for banned content. While it will be billed as a tool for detecting child abuse imagery, its potential for misuse is vast based on details entering the public domain.

The neural network-based tool will scan individual users' iDevices for child sexual abuse material (CSAM), respected cryptography professor Matthew Green told The Register today.

Rather than using age-old hash-matching technology, however, Apple's new tool – due to be announced today along with a technical whitepaper, we are told – will use machine learning techniques to identify images of abused children.