Last month, the civil rights group condemned Apple’s proposed launch of neuralMatch, a system that would track alleged CSAM on iPhones and iPads. And these same surveillance systems can be easily retooled by authoritarian governments to target political dissidents and religious communities.” A single search error can upend someone’s entire life. These search tools are incredibly dangerous, putting us all at risk of false allegation and wrongful arrest. This ruling goes beyond just one company, banning similar searches by nearly every tech giant. “When police search every American without a warrant, it’s clearly unconstitutional,” said Surveillance Technology Oversight Project Executive Director Albert Fox Cahn. “CSAM is horrific, but even horrific problems still need to be combatted within the Constitution. Google uses similar scans for photos saved to google drive and other services.

The Court suppressed alleged CSAM that had been identified through Google’s automated scanning of Gmail photo attachments. (New York, NY, ) - Today, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.), a New York-based civil rights group, welcomes a decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California, ruling that Google’s automated scanning of users’ photos for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is unconstitutional when used to support a warrant application. Welcomes Federal Ruling Blocking Google Photo Scanning

Google photo scan