Apple recently revealed that updates to iOS and iCloud will include three new functions:

1. Communication safety in Messages

2. CSAM detection

3. Expanding guidance in Siri and Search

The first and third new functions are admirable, and function without exfiltrating your data without your permission outside your family. The second one is a problem for free societies. Apple is in a position to affect the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans (and billions of users world wide). I admire their pro-privacy positions in the past, their reluctance to lament to government surveillance is estimable. 

This new change in direction is a grotesque betrayal of their users' expectations of privacy. The problems they are trying to solve and the goals they want to achieve are great goals to strive for, but their methods leave us all exposed to expansion of mission and abuse by governments with nefarious intent. 

Nelson Mandela once said: "For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others". Apple would do good to remember the words of Nelson Mandela.

I hope Apple reconsiders their decisions, and retracts these invasive policies that infringe on the privacy of their customers, and those they interact with.