Demonstrations Planned at Apple Stores in San Francisco, Boston, Portland, and Atlanta
San Francisco—Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) activists will lead a protest on Monday, September 13, at 6 pm PT, demanding Apple drop its planned iPhone surveillance software program, which will endanger the privacy and security of its customers and open a backdoor to increased surveillance around the world.
Demonstrators from EFF and Fight For the Future (FFTF) will rally in front of Apple’s flagship store to send a message to the iPhone giant that the program, a shocking about-face for users who have relied on the company’s leadership in privacy and security, must be cancelled.
To make sure that Apple gets the message that encryption is simply too important to give up on, EFF will also be sending it straight to Apple’s headquarters—by flying an aerial banner over the campus during their September 14 iPhone launch event.
“Users want the devices they have purchased to work for them—not to spy on them for others,” said Joe Mullin, a policy analyst on EFF’s activism team who will speak at Monday’s protest. “Delaying the program is a step in the right direction, but it is not enough. Apple needs to take the next step to protect its users and abandon the program.”
Protests at Apple Stores, organized by EFF, FFTF, and OpenMedia, are planned in Boston, Portland, Atlanta, and other cities. A map of the locations can be found at https://www.nospyphone.com/#map.
EFF and partners have delivered petitions with 60,000 signatures telling Apple not to scan customers’ phones. In addition, EFF joined the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and more than 90 other organizations in sending a letter urging Apple CEO Tim Cook to stop the company’s plans to weaken privacy and security on Apple’s iPhones and other products.
The iPhone surveillance software will continuously scan user photos to compare them to a secret government-created database of child abuse images. The parental notification scanner uses on-device machine learning to scan messages, then informs a third party, which breaks the promise of end-to-end encryption. Apple’s new surveillance infrastructure will be all too easy for governments to redirect to greater surveillance and censorship.
What:
Don’t Scan Our Phones Protest
Speaker:
EFF Policy Analyst Joe Mullin
Where:
Apple Store
300 Post Street
San Francisco CA 94108
When:
Monday, September 13
6 pm PT
For more about Apple’s program:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/apples-plan-think-different-about-encryption-opens-backdoor-your-private-life
For this release:
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-activists-lead-protest-demanding-apple-cancel-iphone-scanning-program-and-keep