Apple wins dismissal of lawsuit over child sexual abuse material on iCloud

Amy and Jessica sued Apple in 2024, claiming that years-old images of their abuse as children continued to be stored and shared on Apple’s iCloud platform.

The lawsuit claimed Apple knew there was a problem with child sexual abuse material on iCloud, but chose not to use widely available technology to identify and report it.

In 2021, Apple announced it was going to launch a program known as NeuralHash to identify child sex abuse material, but by the following year it said it would no longer be implementing it, according to the lawsuit. At the same time, the company made end-to-end encryption available on iCloud data, making it nearly impossible for law enforcement or Apple to identify child sexual abuse material on iCloud, the lawsuit said.

Apple has said it has worked hard to eliminate the spread of child sexual abuse material on its devices. In filings, the company said it elected to use methods other than NeuralHash in a bid to eliminate risks to users’ security and privacy.