The Heat Initiative, a nonprofit child safety advocacy group, was formed earlier this year to campaign against some of the strong privacy protections Apple provides customers.

The group says these protections help enable child exploitation, objecting that paedophiles can encrypt their data just like everyone else.

To make matters worse,. when Apple launched its new iPhone this September, the Heat Initiative seized on the occasion, taking out a full-page New York Times ad, using digital billboard trucks, and even hiring a plane to fly over Apple headquarters with a banner message.

The message on the banner appeared simple: 'Dear Apple, Detect Child Sexual Abuse in iCloud' -- Apple's cloud storage system, which today employs a range of powerful encryption technologies aimed at preventing hackers, spies, and Tim Cook from knowing anything about your private files.

However, the Tame Apple Press has been digging around and claims that the Hopewell Fund backs the Heat Initiative. It claims that Hopewell is part of a giant, tightly connected web of largely anonymous, Democratic Party-aligned dark-money groups, in an ironic turn, campaigning to undermine the privacy of “ordinary people.”

According to a report in Apple’s favourite newspaper the New York Times, the Heat Initiative is armed with $2 million from donors, including the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, an organisation founded by British billionaire hedge fund manager and Google activist investor Chris Cohn, and the Oak Foundation, also founded by a British billionaire.

The Oak Foundation previously provided $250,000 to a group attempting to weaken end-to-end encryption protections in EU legislation, according to a 2020 annual report. The Heat Initiative is helmed by Sarah Gardner, who joined from Thorn, an anti-child trafficking organisation founded by actor Ashton Kutcher, who ironically played Steve Jobs in the movie “Jobs.”

Critics say these technologies aren't just uncovering trafficked children but ensnaring adults engaging in consensual sex work.

"My goal is for child sexual abuse images not to be freely shared on the internet, and I'm here to advocate for the children who cannot make the case for themselves," Gardner said, declining to name the Heat Initiative's funders. "I think data privacy is vital. There's a conflation between user privacy and known illegal content."