Doctor arrested with 2,000 child pornography images on his iCloud

This affair would surely not have made so much noise if it had not happened now, in the middle of the great controversy surrounding the CSAM tools that Apple would like to implement on its devices in order to scan the iCloud photos of its users , with the sole aim of combating child pornography and child trafficking.

While this measure must facea horde of defenders of individual freedoms, not wanting Apple to spy on their iCloud account, even if it is to protect children, a doctor from the San Fransciscio Bay region nevertheless provides a major example to Apple of the merits of its tools. Without even having usedCSAM tools, American federal authorities arrested this doctor who was in possession of child pornography images.

These images were found on his iCloud account. In total, investigators have collected more than 2,000 images and videos of child sexual exploitation on the account of this 58-year-old doctor. An oncology specialist, he was affiliated with several Bay Area medical institutions, as well as an associate professor at the UCSF School of Medicine.

Proof of how CSAM works?

Federal authorities conducted this investigation without the CSAM tools that Apple is preparing to launch. They managed to gain access to his iCloud account by other means, and thus get their hands on this mountain of evidence.

For its part, Apple plans to launch a tool that compares the images stored in our iCloud accounts with those in a database of exploited or missing children. More precisely, Apple compares the hashes of the two images in order to find matches. In no case does it scan the photos on our accounts, and it does not know what it is, only that it is different from the photos in the database. In order to better understand CSAM tools, Apple published an FAQ a few days ago,you can find it here.