Feb. 19 (UPI) — Apple’s iCloud and iOS services allowed their users to store and share child sex abuse materials, West Virginia’s attorney general said in a lawsuit filed Thursday.
The consumer protection lawsuit in West Virginia’s Circuit Court of Mason County is the first filed against Apple for alleged distribution of child sex abuse materials and names Apple Inc. as the only defendant.
“Preserving the privacy of child predators is absolutely inexcusable, and, more importantly, it violates West Virginia law,” West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey said in a news release.
“Since Apple has so far refused to police themselves and do the morally right thing, I am filing this lawsuit to demand Apple follow the law, report these images and stop re-victimizing children by allowing these images to be stored and shared.”
McCluskey says Apple’s internal communications show one or more company officials said Apple is the “greatest platform for distributing child porn” but did nothing meaningful to stop it.
“Rather than implement industry-standard detection tools used by its peers, Apple repeatedly shirked their responsibility to protect children under the guise of user privacy,” McCluskey said.
Apple officials in 2021 announced the tech firm had created its NeuralHash tool that would limit the storage and sharing of child sex abuse materials and report them to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
The lawsuit said the tool was less effective than an existing tool called PhotoDNA that other online platforms used to detect, remove and report the offensive and illegal materials.
Apple abandoned the NeuralHash project a year later to “protect its brand and outsized smartphone and digital storage market share,” McCluskey alleged.
The attorney general said reports of such illegal materials on online platforms rose from 32 million in 2022 to more than 36 million in 2023, but Apple reported far fewer than the owners of competing platforms.
McCluskey asked the court to order Apple take reasonable measures to abate the storage and distribution of the offending materials on its platforms and declare the tech firm has violated West Virginia laws.
The attorney general also seeks restitution, disgorgement, civil penalties and other monetary penalties, plus interest.
Apple officials did not immediately respond to a UPI inquiry seeking comment on the matter.