West Virginia Sues Apple Over iCloud Child Abuse Material

West Virginia's attorney general filed a lawsuit against Apple on Thursday, accusing the company of knowingly allowing its iCloud service to store and share child sexual abuse material, marking the first such action by a state or federal agency.

Attorney General John B. McCuskey alleged that Apple violated the state's consumer protection laws by refusing to implement detection tools for photos and videos containing child mistreatment material. The suit, filed in Mason County Circuit Court, claims Apple's emphasis on user privacy has enabled the spread of such content across iCloud services, including iMessage and Photos, more easily than on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. McCuskey described the material as a "permanent record of a child's trauma," adding in a statement, "This conduct is despicable, and Apple's inaction is inexcusable."

The lawsuit highlights Apple's decisions to forgo widely used technologies, such as Microsoft's PhotoDNA, which scans uploads against databases of known abuse material provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Companies including Google and Dropbox have adopted similar systems. In contrast, Apple reported just 267...