By Heather Hamilton, contributing writer
Apple announced last week the introduction of the iPhone X , one of two new phones to be released by the company. The phone has FaceID, a new technology designed to allow users secure access to their phone via face-scanning technology. A TrueDepth camera system composed of a dot projector, infrared camera, and flood illuminator powered by A11 Bionic works to map and recognize faces, projecting over 30,000 invisible IR dots, and cannot be spoofed using photographs or masks.
What Apple intended as a feature to make customers feel confident in their security could potentially create a crisis of consumer privacy. And, while consumers fear things like bypassing facial recognition using photos, Wired warns of a more sinister violation of privacy — government surveillance.
They report that one in two American adults is already enrolled in a facial-recognition network for law enforcement, and a quarter of all police departments have the ability to run facial-recognition searches. Until now, Wired writer Jake Laperruque says that facial recognition has not extended to include consumer platforms. “For the first time, a company will have a unified single facial-recognition system built into the world’s most popular devices — the hardware necessary to scan and identify faces throughout the world,” he writes.
Right now, Apple can’t access the faceprint data stored in iPhones, but, as we saw in the San Bernardino case involving Syed Rizwan Farook, the government could mandate it. Laperruque believes that this has the potential to allow, via government order, the scanning of all Apple devices in a search for specific targets.
Matthew Segal, who is a legal director for the Massachusetts ACLU, says that it isn’t yet clear what the legal implications of opening your phone with your face are, though Quartz suggests that we’ll find out when the lawsuits begin happening.
Forbes points out that FaceID also has the potential to impact law enforcement searches by allowing officers to hold a phone up to a suspect’s face, thus unlocking the device. Previously, police have attempted to force suspects to offer their fingerprint, and many speculate that this violation of rights will be easier than ever.
Matthew Green, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, told Forbes, “We don’t know much. But for one thing, it’s relatively hard to avoid using your face. With TouchID, you could at least give the wrong finger.” He goes on to express concern over using pictures to unlock the phone, claiming that other technologies may help combat these concerns, but, with Apple’s reluctance to discuss their technology, we simply don’t know.
Minnesota Senator Al Franken has also expressed concerns over the phone’s security and potential privacy implications. His letter contained a list of 10 questions and voiced a variety of concerns, including the fact that facial recognition has always been racially biased .
“While I am encouraged by the steps that Apple states it has taken to implement the system responsibly, the addition of this new technology to the iPhone has serious privacy implications,” Franken wrote on Facebook. “In a letter, I asked CEO Tim Cook a series of important questions about the iPhone X’s FaceID system, including how users’ ‘faceprints’ will be protected and safeguarded, if at any point that data will be shared or sold to marketers, and whether or not law enforcement will be able to access the FaceID database.”
Sources: Apple, Wired, Quartz, Forbes, Business Insider, Wired
Image Source: Pixabay
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