Apple has recently announced plans to scan customers’ mobile devices for pictures uploaded to its iCloud servers as well as texts shared through its messaging app for child sexual exploitation materials, raising significant questions and concerns regarding surveillance and reigniting the debate on encryption. Western law enforcement and intelligence agencies have long warned about their seeming inability to gain access to the content of individuals’ private electronic communications due to the widespread use and implementation of encryption technologies in consumer electronics, posing risks to public safety and national security. In particular, these arguments are often linked to threats, including terrorism, domestic violent extremism and, more recently, child sexual exploitation. 

Police and intelligence agencies believe it will become increasingly difficult to curtail such crimes when unbreakable encryption continues to be widely implemented in everyday electronics. As a result, such agencies are increasingly making calls to tech companies to devise new ways that allow them access to private communications by weakening their encryption systems; and Australia and the UK have gone as far as passing legislation to compel company cooperation in this regard. This report was developed in collaboration with Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst, Cybersecure Policy Exchange (CPX), & TMU Leadership Lab.