West Virginia Attorney General J.B. McCuskey
CHARLESTON – West Virginia Attorney General J.B. McCuskey’s office has filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit alleging Apple knowingly allowed its iCloud platform to be used as a vehicle for distributing and storing child sexual abuse material.
The lawsuit claims Apple knew about the problem for years but chose to do nothing about it.
“Preserving the privacy of child predators is absolutely inexcusable,” McCuskey said during a February 19 press conference announcing the lawsuit, which was filed this morning in Mason Circuit Court. “And more importantly, it violates West Virginia law.
“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.”
The AG’s office says the consumer protection complaint is the first lawsuit of its kind brought by a governmental agency against Apple over child sexual abuse material (CSAM) distribution
The lawsuit claims Apple, in its own internal communications, described itself as the “greatest platform for distributing child porn” — yet took no meaningful action to stop it.
Instead of using industry-standard detection tools used by its peers, Apple allegedly repeatedly shirked its responsibility to protect children under the guise of user privacy.
McCuskey’s office says federal law requires all technology companies based in the United States to report detected CSAM to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
In 2023, Apple made just 267 such reports. By contrast, Google filed 1.47 million reports, and Meta filed more than 30.6 million.
McCuskey says Apple’s failure to use available detection technology is not a passive oversight — it is a choice.
Because Apple maintains end-to-end control over its hardware, software, and cloud infrastructure, the lawsuit claims the company can’t claim to be an unknowing, passive conduit of CSAM. The complaint says Apple designed, built and profited from the system it allowed to be weaponized against children.
In the complaint, the AG’s office seeks statutory and punitive damages, injunctive relief requiring Apple to implement effective CSAM detection measures, and equitable remedies mandating safer product design going forward.
In addition to McCuskey and Assistant AGs Jace Goins and Abby Cunningham, private attorneys Troy Giatras and Matthew Stonestreet are representing the state. The case has been assigned to Circuit Judge Richard Tatterson.
Mason Circuit Court case number 26-C-16
