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Apple sued for failing to curtail child sexual abuse material on iCloud

The notice arrived months after Apple had unveiled a tool that allowed it to scan for illegal images of sexual abuse.

The Apple logo is seen hanging at the entrance to the Apple store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, New York, U.S., October 16, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Segar

The abuse began when she was still an infant. A relative molested her, took photographs and swapped the images with others online. He allowed another man to spend time with her, multiplying the abuse.

Nearly every day, the woman, now 27, is reminded of that abuse with a law enforcement notice that someone has been charged with possessing those images. One such notification, which she received in late 2021, said the images had been found on a man’s MacBook in Vermont. Her lawyer later confirmed with law enforcement that the images had also been stored in Apple’s iCloud.

The notice arrived months after Apple had unveiled a tool that allowed it to scan for illegal images of sexual abuse. But it quickly abandoned that tool after facing criticism from cybersecurity experts, who said it could pave the way to other government surveillance requests.

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Now, the woman, using a pseudonym, is suing Apple because she says it broke its promise to protect victims like her. Instead of using the tools that it had created to identify, remove and report images of her abuse, the lawsuit says, Apple allowed that material to proliferate, forcing victims of child sexual abuse to relive the trauma that has shaped their lives.

The lawsuit was filed late Saturday in U.S. District Court in Northern California. It says Apple’s failures mean it has been selling defective products that harmed a class of customers, namely child sexual abuse victims, because it briefly introduced “a widely touted improved design aimed at protecting children” but “then failed to implement those designs or take any measures to detect and limit” child sexual abuse material.

The suit seeks to change Apple’s practices and compensate a potential group of 2,680 victims who are eligible to be part of the case, said James Marsh, one of the attorneys involved. Under law, victims of child sexual abuse are entitled to a minimum of $150,000 in damages, which means the total award, with the typical tripling of damages being sought, could exceed $1.2 billion should a jury find Apple liable.

In a statement in response to the suit, Fred Sainz, an Apple spokesperson, pointed to safety tools the company has introduced to curtail the spread of newly created illegal images.