The U.S. state of West Virginia has filed a new lawsuit against Apple, accusing the company of failing to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse material through iOS devices and its iCloud cloud storage service.
According to CNBC, West Virginia Attorney General John “J.B.” McCuskey, a Republican, stated that Apple prioritized its privacy focused brand image and commercial interests over child safety.
The state is seeking statutory and punitive damages. It is also requesting a court order requiring Apple to implement an effective system to detect and block child sexual abuse material.
McCuskey noted that other technology companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Dropbox, have adopted detection systems such as PhotoDNA.
PhotoDNA was developed in 2009 by Microsoft in partnership with Dartmouth College. The system automatically identifies and blocks reported exploitative images through image matching technology.
In 2021, Apple tested features designed to detect child sexual abuse material. The system was capable of automatically identifying such images, removing them, and reporting content uploaded to iCloud in the United States to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
However, Apple later withdrew its plans to deploy these features after privacy advocates raised concerns. Critics argued that the technology could create a security vulnerability enabling government surveillance and could potentially be modified to censor other types of content on user devices.