Apple is prying into iPhones to find sexual predators, but privacy activists worry governments could weaponize the feature

“Regardless of what Apple’s long term plans are, they’ve sent a very clear signal,” wrote Matthew Green, an associate professor of computer science at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, on Twitter. “In their (very influential) opinion, it is safe to build systems that scan users’ phones for prohibited content. That’s the message they’re sending to governments, competing services, China, you.”