Confidentiality concerns | German Parliament writes to Tim Cook, calls Apple's use of CSAM tech 'dangerous'

The letter raises concerns on Apple's new CSAM tech.

Apple has faced a wave of backlash against the new Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) scanning tool that it announced recently.

A lot of people have spoken out against the tool, including Edward Snowden, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney and WhatsApp Boss Will Cathcart.

Apple has attempted to dissuade the fears by suggesting that it will only hunt for pictures that have been flagged by clearing houses in multiple countries.  The discussion, however, has not died down.

Now Manuel Hoferlin, Chairman of the Digital Agenda Committee in the German Parliament has written a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, expressing concern over the new technology and calling the path Apple is taking, "dangerous."

He called the technology the, "greatest dam break for the confidentiality of communication that we have experienced since the invention of the Internet."

He said that every technology that scans user files destroys their trust and warned that without confidentiality, the internet could become the, "largest surveillance instrument in history."

Hoferlin says that Apple's recent pivot to limit the scanning tech will not change that. A narrow backdoor will still remain a backdoor. He also warned that requests to extend the monitoring beyond CSAM are inevitable and that Apple will lose access to major markets if they choose to reject such requests.

Recently, Apple executive Craig Federighi said that Apple's iCloud scanning programme will have multiple levels of auditability.

"We ship the same software in China with the same database we ship in America, as we ship in Europe. If someone were to come to Apple [with a request to scan for data beyond CSAM], Apple would say no. But let’s say you aren’t confident. You don’t want to just rely on Apple saying no," Federighi told Wall Street Journal.

“There are multiple levels of auditability, and so we’re making sure that you don’t have to trust any one entity, or even any one country, as far as what images are part of this process,” he added.