'Dear Apple, The iPhone X and Face ID Are Orwellian and Creepy' (hackernoon.com) 441
Trent Lapinski from Hacker Noon writes an informal letter to Apple, asking "who the hell actually asked for Face ID?" and calling the iPhone X and new face-scanning security measure "Orwellian" and "creepy": For the company that famously used 1984 in its advertising to usher in a new era of personal computing, it is pretty ironic that 30+ years later they would announce technology that has the potential to eliminate global privacy. I've been waiting 10-years since the first iPhone was announced for a full-screen device that is both smaller in my hand but has a larger display and higher capacity battery. However, I do not want these features at the cost of my privacy, and the privacy of those around me. While the ease of use and user experience of Face ID is apparent, I am not questioning that, the privacy concerns are paramount in today's world of consistent security breaches. Given what we know from Wikileaks Vault7 and the CIA / NSA capabilities to hijack any iPhone, including any sensor on the phone, the very thought of handing any government a facial ID system for them to hack into is a gift the world may never be able to return. Face ID will have lasting privacy implications from 2017 moving forward, and I'm pretty sure I am not alone in not wanting to participate.
The fact of the matter is the iPhone X does not need Face ID, Apple could have easily put a Touch ID sensor on the back of the phone for authentication (who doesn't place their finger on the back of their phone?). I mean imagine how cool it would be to put your finger on the Apple logo on the back of your iPhone for Touch ID? It would have been a highly marketable product feature that is equally as effective as Face ID without the escalating Orwellian privacy implications. [...] For Face ID to work, the iPhone X actively has to scan faces looking for its owner when locked. This means anyone within a several foot range of an iPhone X will get their face scanned by other people's phones and that's just creepy.
The fact of the matter is the iPhone X does not need Face ID, Apple could have easily put a Touch ID sensor on the back of the phone for authentication (who doesn't place their finger on the back of their phone?). I mean imagine how cool it would be to put your finger on the Apple logo on the back of your iPhone for Touch ID? It would have been a highly marketable product feature that is equally as effective as Face ID without the escalating Orwellian privacy implications. [...] For Face ID to work, the iPhone X actively has to scan faces looking for its owner when locked. This means anyone within a several foot range of an iPhone X will get their face scanned by other people's phones and that's just creepy.
Whiner (Score:2, Insightful)
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Or technology period.
Re:Whiner (Score:5, Insightful)
Who asked for the original Macintosh or iPhone either?
Neither of those require giving up private information for a product. Do we need facial rec. to unlock a stupid phone? Heck, no. You could easily come up with a dozen, quick means to unlock a phone, that did not involve privacy violation. So we can assume this method was deliberately chosen to invade the privacy of users.
Re:Whiner (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither of those require giving up private information for a product. Do we need facial rec. to unlock a stupid phone? Heck, no. You could easily come up with a dozen, quick means to unlock a phone, that did not involve privacy violation. So we can assume this method was deliberately chosen to invade the privacy of users.
I typically hate the response I'm about to give since I've always felt it to be a cover-all-cop-out but this time I think this is an instance where it does apply. You're under no obligation to buy it. If they miscalculate a technology or marketing decision, you and everyone else should "punish" them by simply not buying the phone. Corporations aren't democratic. At best, you can stretch them to qualify as a republic with money being your elected representative. We can sit here and criticize them all day but if the phone sells like hot cakes because people love this feature, then we're just wrong.
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Re:Whiner (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure that I see the relevance of the expectation of privacy in public places. What about the expectation of privacy in private places? The phone isn't going to detect the transition between the two and adjust its behaviour.
Re: Whiner (Score:5, Informative)
The watch word of the day is "normalization," isn't it? Apple including facial recognition technology helps normalize the idea and numb people to its use in a way thet Microsoft and Samsung apparently weren't because lack of hipster cred. But now that Apple has done it, it will go "mainstream" (i.e., people will realize it is where it was and think that's new. Also will want to add it other places).
There is only a bit of snark there. But frankly, yes, facial recognition technology is more invasive than fingerprint readers because i don't have to touch the phone. It is passive collection technology. And it isn't even necessarily the fact that Apple is using it for login (biometrics should replace user names, not passphrases) or that scan data is held in the SEP. it is that Apple has a chip in the phone that can do reasonably accurate scans at a good rate. Its probably only a matter of time before a Square-like device is made leveraging the ability to provide minority-report like indenrification of shoppers (and then they'll helpfully airplay ads and coupons to people!)
Like I said, some degree of snark there. But if any company can push pervasive biometric identification beyond "z0mg government spying!!" to "this is totally normal and acceptable. I don't remeber a world wherein my face wasn't scanned 300 times a day creating an irrefutable log of my movements and actions throughout the day! Isn't it a totally wonderful and acceptable social norm?!," well that would be Apple.
Re:Whiner (Score:5, Insightful)
4. Placing a TouchID sensor on the back of the phone is a singularly horrible idea from a usability standpoint
That is nonsense.
There are plenty of phones that have the touch sensor on the backside, and my friends who own such phones, love it.
Re:Whiner (Score:4, Funny)
y finger naturally falls right into the TouchID hole on the rear.
Are we still talking about phones?
Re:Whiner (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Apple's FaceID Facial Recognition, including Enrollment, is done entirely on the iPhone. And any Recognition Data on the phone is stored in the Secure Enclave, inaccessible to everyone, including Apple.
How do you know, you've looked at the source code?
Re:Whiner (Score:4, Informative)
People often don't know what they've been missing out on until you show it to them.
It's nothing new. For instance, face unlock was available on Alienware laptops 7+ years ago and has been common on Samsung devices for a while. The fact that Apple users "discover" that in September 2017 says a lot about this brand and their customer base.
Windows Hello (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or is it actually more like "Brave New World"?
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It may be "available" for Surface, but is it required? AFAICT if you have an iPhone 10 you're stuck with using your face to unlock your phone whether you like it or not.
Or a recent picture of your face. Or someone else pushing your face up against the camera, which is preferable to them removing your face, I guess.
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Nope - a picture will not unlock it - it works on 3D shape, not on image comparison - hence why it works in pitch black - because it's using IR to measure the shape, not visible light.
It's a good thing there's no commonly available technology that someone could use to print a 3d replica of your face.
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IR is (invisible)light you idiot.
Re:Windows Hello (Score:5, Informative)
AFAICT if you have an iPhone 10 you're stuck with using your face to unlock your phone whether you like it or not.
This is just plan false.
Re: Windows Hello (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait... wut...
Apple is the only company that's doing this with IR scanners that actually detect the shape of your face, not just doing image comparisons.
Apple is the only company giving hard guarantees that the facial recognition data is never going to leave the device.
That is, they're the only company respecting your security, and your privacy. Why on earth would they be the only one you don't trust with it?
Re: Windows Hello (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait... wut...
Apple is the only company that's doing this with IR scanners that actually detect the shape of your face, not just doing image comparisons.
Apple is the only company giving hard guarantees that the facial recognition data is never going to leave the device.
That is, they're the only company respecting your security, and your privacy. Why on earth would they be the only one you don't trust with it?
For the same reason a developer just told me that MacOS is closed source, so when I first told him, and then (because he did not believe me) showed him this:
.. he defaulted to claiming that the source may be out there but Apple will sue you for breach of IP rights and copyright violation if you modify the code. So I told him I've fixed bugs in OS X/MacOS using that source code and sent them to Apple and have yet to be sued. At that point he changed the subject to talk about how Aqua is closed source which is true but Aqua is also not part of MacOS any more than X11 is an integral part of Linux and I can point out to you plenty of closed source software that runs on Linux. That does not make Linux closed source, it just means that Linux is able to run closed source software. Some people just have to hate something for no particular reason and invent insane bullshit stories about it, for some it's immigrants, for others it's broccoli, for these people it's Apple. Apple is a greedy soulless corporation, but I don't think they are any more greedy or soulless than many other greedy soulless corporations like for example Google and Samsung.
https://opensource.apple.com/ [apple.com]
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Google is not soulless, you insensitive clod!
They got at least my soul already!!
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and apple is the only company I dont trust with this info.
So, you would trust google with that information?
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And Apple doesn't get this info.
The face ID data stays on your phone in the secure enclave. It doesn't go to Apple.
It doesn't even go outside the secure enclave.
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Apple has a lot to lose if people find out the Secure Enclave is not doing what Apple said. Unlike Google, who is hard to avoid, consumers can give Apple the middle finger quite easily and jump ship. Apple's good name is why people pay more for their hardware.
Of all the companies that have large databases on people, I would expect Apple to be the most worried if they got compromised, mainly because of the "boutique" status of their products, and the relative ease it is to jump ship, either from macOS to W
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Toshiba laptops going back to the WinXP/Win7 crossover, so about 8-9 years. You bought a Satellite Pro with Win7 installed and facial recognition available. If you initiated a factory restore and chose XP, facial recognition wasn't available/installed. Not very reliable so I switched it off.
Also available on my Motorola RAZR HD from 2013. I trained it with and without glasses, with and without beard, and it works reliably nearly everywhere and everywhen, except...... first thing in the morning. Doesn't like
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3D depth map of face, not just a 2D image (Score:2)
Never mind the detail that the iPhone X facial recognition is a LOT more complex than to my knowledge any other customer level gadget out there
prove it by providing technical facts, not iPropaganda.
Like the fact that it has special hardware for detecting the 3D topology of your face, a 3D depth map. That it is *not* simply looking at a 2D image as other current facial recognition software does, as the 8-9 year old platforms referenced did.
"Face ID
With the Home button and Touch ID gone, Apple's new way of unlocking the iPhone X is called Face ID. The feature uses the new front-facing camera setup, which includes the lens, a new IR camera, a flood illuminator, dot projector, and ambient light sensor
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It's nothing new. For instance, face unlock was available on Alienware laptops 7+ years ago and has been common on Samsung devices for a while. The fact that Apple users "discover" that in September 2017 says a lot about this brand and their customer base.
I think if you'll take a closer look at the actual implementation, you'll find that they're not at all similar. But please, don't let that stop you from being smug.
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Re:Whiner (Score:5, Insightful)
Like touchscreen = touchscreen, hidef screens = hidef screens, fingerprint reader = fingerprint reader, trackpad = trackpad, etc...
Except that people who used Apple’s implementation of these and many other technologies panned as “2-3 years behind the curve” realize that Apples implementation is the first widely available _GOOD_ implementation of them.
I used touchscreens on phones for years before the iPhone. They all sucked.
Hidef screens on PCs, same (mostly due to poor OS support).
Fingerprint readers that worked 1/4 of the time (and were trivially spoofed), same thing, in fact my most recent Samsung work phone STILL only unlocks after multiple tries.
Apple’s Magic Trackpad & MacOS’ gesture support are _still_ better than everyone else’s.
But you go ahead and stick your fingers in your ears while muttering “late to the game” & “expensive”.
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realize that Apples implementation is the first widely available _GOOD_ implementation of them.
Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. Apple isn't a goose that shits out nothing but golden eggs. They have their fair share of misshits too.
Speaking of high def touchscreen, what's so much better about Apple's current top of the line OLED screen with a notch on it, then the higher resolution, better colour and higher brightness screen in the 3 year old Galaxy S6?
- Sometimes Apple is a true quality leader (first really high resolution display).
- Sometimes they seriously misshit (bullshit excuse about c
Re: Whiner (Score:5, Interesting)
One in 50K false positive was for Touch ID. The false positive for Face ID is one in 1 million.
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With iPhone X everyone gets photographed no matter what if they walk by it.
Or, you know, black tape.
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Worked out for this guy [youtube.com]...
Re: Whiner (Score:4, Funny)
This guy has no idea how Face ID works (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This guy has no idea how Face ID works (Score:4, Informative)
Just a month ago the encryption key for the Secure Enclave firmware on the iPhone 5S's was found.
While it doesn't mean someone can remote access the data from it, it does mean someone could load their own firmware on to an iPhone 5S's Secure Enclave. It also means the firmware can be analysed for vulnerabilities.
IT may be extremely difficult to get in to it, but I wouldn't go as far as saying its "literally impossible to reverse engineer, due to the high levels of iOS hardware security".
Sure, it's a high level of security, but nothing is perfect.
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correct he's insane and has written for the clickbait without any knowledge of the systems or potential
Re:This guy has no idea how Face ID works (Score:5, Informative)
Just a month ago the encryption key for the Secure Enclave firmware on the iPhone 5S's was found. While it doesn't mean someone can remote access the data from it, it does mean someone could load their own firmware on to an iPhone 5S's Secure Enclave.
Hell no, lies and FUD. It just means someone has found the decryption key embedded in every copy of the Secure Enclave that Apple has used to obfuscate the code in transit. The updates are still signed, the signature check can't be disabled and the signing key only exists in Apple HQ, hackers can now begin to analyze the binary but there's no way for anyone else to alter it.
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I don't care! My iPhone 4 doesn't have any "secure enclave" for hackers to crack! Ah!
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You know what I fear? The fact that we're in 2017 and Slashdot still doesn't support UTF-8.
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You can't get any more white than the French. On the Web we need UTF-8 for accentuated characters.
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You can still post in english and have the whole thing fail miserably. Look at Archvile7's post, it's all messed up.
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Just wanted to extend this with more details.
When the OP asks, "Who was wanting FaceID?" I can help with that.
Physical buttons on consumer hardware are expensive. I mean that in terms of production, warranty, maintenance, and customer satisfaction. I mean that last one in terms not in usability, but in terms of anger of out-of-warranty broken buttons rendering a device useless. This is
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They already removed the button in last year's model. The iPhone 7 (and 8) have a touchID sensor on the lower bezel, but the home button itself has been replaced by haptic feedback.
I don't have any moral opposition to Face ID, just some practical arguments against it; more parts to fail than a Touch ID sensor, potential issues in direct sunlight, less convenient for quick payments, easier for an attacker to capture your face surreptitiously than your fingerprints.
In any event, Apple should give users the op
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They already removed the button in last year's model. The iPhone 7 (and 8) have a touchID sensor on the lower bezel, but the home button itself has been replaced by haptic feedback.
What, you think that's cheaper than a mechanical button?
Re:This guy has no idea how Face ID works (Score:5, Informative)
The iPhone 7/8 Touch ID sensor innately provides proximity/pressure sensitivity without need of moving parts. The sole value add function of the physical button is to provide tactile feedback to the user. By replacing the tactile feedback with haptic feedback using the vibration motor, Apple was able to eliminate all the moving parts from the home button, eliminating a significant source of repair claims on the entire device.
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Dude, even easier, don't use it. Just configure the security the way you want to roll, don't like the biometrics don't configure them and don't use them, they are not compulsory. As for the phone itself, if you need to buy apps to make it functional buy Android, there are a whole bunch of phones, you do not need to buy one app for, they are fully functional out of the box. Don't know how broad the base apps for iphones are and whether or not you can do every from calendar and appointments to fully featured
Isn't Apple already censoring negative comments? (Score:3)
I think your "future" has already arrive on the Apple website. If you get too negative, then your comment will be blocked. I think it's based on automatic sentiment analysis, but there might be a personalized element there, based on my prior negative comments. Most of them involved annoying problems with the voice dictation. I posted a longer description elsewhere in this discussion, but your comment was the only one to mention censorship.
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Iâ(TM)m not claiming youâ(TM)re wrong or anything but I canâ(TM)t help but get the feeling you âoecopypastaâd your post. ;)
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Uh huh. Do we trust Apple?
Re:This guy has no idea how Face ID works (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, law enforcement can force you to use your fingerprint to unlock your phone [arstechnica.com]. They just can't force you to use your passcode.
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Re:This guy has no idea how Face ID works (Score:5, Informative)
TL;DR
Laws in the U.S.A. are fucked-up.
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Uh huh. Sure it's not a case of "the police can legally lie to you about all this shit they claim is the law"?
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and this is a compelling reason to NOT use finger id for phones.
its stupid that this is how it is; but I'm not going to give any advantage to the thugs in blue, if/when they stop me and want to have a little fun at my expense.
Re:This guy has no idea how Face ID works (Score:5, Informative)
In iOS 11, just click the power button 5 times - that temporarily disables both TouchID and FaceID, requiring a passcode to unlock the phone
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I imagine that can be optionally disabled as with touchID. I can't say for certain yet, but it would definitely be a worthy hate article if it lacked that feature.
They were quite clear that the facial recognition and underlying AI was on the device and not anywhere else, that's one of the big features. Not really sure how that got missed on. But as you point out there's some real basic meatspace work-arounds for that, so for people who are worried about it, and there are non-criminals with significant conce
Face ID optional (Score:2)
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I'm pretty sure iOS 10 made the default passcode length 6 digits - it is hasn't been 4 since iOS 9...
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Apple's security with regard to Touch ID sensor replacements guards against the substitution of a malicious replacement sensor that compromises the security of the Touch ID system. Imagine a hypothetical replacement sensor with a "backdoor" fingerprint pattern, or a man-in-the-middle device that recorded or cloned the bits as they were being sent from the sensor to the secure enclave for authentication, thus allowing their playback for future unlocking of the device.
You're showing your password to everyone (Score:2)
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Spoiler alert (Score:5, Funny)
It recently leaked that - in the opening scene of Game Of Thrones Season 8, we'll see Arya Stark successfully unlock Littlefinger's iPhone X using his face.
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Right answer, wrong analysis (Score:2)
If Mr. Lapinski (the blogger) thinks this will have any significant effect on governments' efforts and success to incorporate facial recognition in the approaching Orwellian utopia, then he is nuts.
On the other hand, I agree that a touch ID on the back would have been nicer. Mostly because I don't want to have to aim my phone in a certain direction for it to unlock.
Get a grip (Score:5, Insightful)
Get a grip, man, I'm sure you can find other things to hate them for, you don't have to make stuff up!
Why didn't anyone hate on Samsung for *actually* taking pictures?
Re:Get a grip (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Get a grip (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that Apple doesn't say "We don't work with the government. Promise."
Apple says "Our products fundamentally limit the ways in which we can work with the government, even if we try or are coerced." The recent leak of the 5s Secure Enclave firmware should allow independent verification of that fact.
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Why do you think it would need to store it at all?
You've got to store *something* initially to refer to later, when you try to unlock the phone. I mean, duh.
More to the point the data that it does store is not simply a hash. A hash can be used for comparison but not for machine learning that it does to keep up with gradual changes like ageing, hair, growing a beard, etc.
You're about 20 years behind in your understanding of what's happening here.
Nonsense really (Score:2, Interesting)
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No one is forcing you to use the sensor and a simple piece of tape or a case can obscure it.
Yeah, because people want to put tape on their 1000 dollar phone. And cases are generally designed to work not to block, so they'll have a hole where a hole is required.
To be honest the cops forcing people to touch unlock their phones is probably what moved apple to this approach and the reason I've never used the touch sensor. The touch sensor was actually a bigger security hole because it appears they won't yet be able to force you to facial unlock the phone.
Under what legal theory are you operating under? Why can't they can't hold your phone up to your face to unlock it?
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Why not ask for a court to request that "look" to unlock?
If no later security was enabled after the needed face thats how police will try to get in.
Another neat law change makes just keeping encryption the crime.
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Original comment: "it appears they won't yet be able to force you to facial unlock the phone"
Follow-up comment: "IANAL but my understanding is there is no legal precedent yet."
These claims are not remotely in agreement. In fact, they are opposites: If there is no legal precedent one way or the other, then of course police will take the presumed liberty to do whatever they want, and dare the courts to stop. And in many cases not even then. That's like, almost the entire history of policing in a nutshell.
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You can't fight "convenience" (Score:3)
I've been thinking about the coming sensor wave for some time, and what I've concluded is this: give people something genuinely more convenient, and they will trade it for slightly more risk, every time. It won't even be close.
Why? Because people intuitively want to use ALL their senses to control their environment. It's something they've been doing their entire lives, and your typical computer interface really stinks by comparison. Heck, even something mundane like driving a car provides a hugely richer control experience than using any smartphone app you can name.
Computer-human interfaces suck. You can't fight progress in this area.
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I've been thinking about the coming sensor wave for some time, and what I've concluded is this: give people something genuinely more convenient, and they will trade it for slightly more risk, every time. It won't even be close.
So is the "coming sensor wave" genuinely more convenient?
Why? Because people intuitively want to use ALL their senses to control their environment. It's something they've been doing their entire lives, and your typical computer interface really stinks by comparison.
Seems quite a lot of people would rather send text messages than talk on a phone.
Only a small minority seem to have much interest at all in video phones.
It's increasingly popular for people to buy things from flat 2d websites rather than shop in real life and numerous experiments at 3Dish interfaces for virtual shopping malls..etc. have failed without any fanfare due to lack of interest.
Heck, even something mundane like driving a car provides a hugely richer control experience than using any smartphone app you can name.
This must explain why they are always reaching for their phones w
CIA, GCHQ, NSA capabilities (Score:2)
Use a pay phone, VOIP, cell phone, new cell phone, that older cell phone that can still connect...
The security services don't care as long as the interesting person is still using a service that offers collect it all access.
The PRISM surveillance program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] showed what could be done.
New or old hardware, the trick is keeping the wider population talking. Any
Tape and passcode, any who? (Score:2, Insightful)
If I can understand this guy's ramblings, he doesn't like that FaceID is so powerful, and he wishes he could unlock his iPhone X another way.
So stick some tape over the front facing camera and use a passcode. Get over it. People have been doing this with their laptop cameras for years.
Even if his argument was based in reality, which I'm not sure it is, there's a well-known work-around.
Don't like it? (Score:3)
Apple Users (Score:2)
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Dear Apple and Microsoft users. Maybe if you care about freedoms, you should be supporting platforms which respect you as a user and support your right to privacy and freedom. Sincerely, someone who doesn't compromise their integrity by using systems which are broken by design.
Better than using a system that is broken by by lack of design, which is what Linux is. And I like Linux. But if you think I'm going to use it on my laptop as my main interface to the world, you need to stop smoking crack.
I'm going to be LMAO, (Score:2)
when October 31st rolls around and everyone who has an iPhone 10 and is wearing a mask discovers that they have to take off part of their costume just to make a phone call. If part of their get-up is heavily applied makeup and/or latex, they may not be able to use their phones at all without pretty much destroying their disguise. In addition to Hallowe'en there are also Mardi Gras, parades, high school plays, and on and on.
A phone that's constantly scanning even strangers' faces without their consent is rud
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Re:I'm going to be LMAO, (Score:5, Insightful)
when October 31st rolls around and everyone who has an iPhone 10 and is wearing a mask discovers that they have to take off part of their costume just to make a phone call.
I'm guessing you don't work on anything more complicated than a horoscope generator, then. Clearly, the fallback in this case would be the passcode. Did you seriously not consider that? And because you didn't actually consider that possibility, did you seriously not consider that Apple engineers would consider it? Or were you just trying to score snark points?
Seriously, which is it? I want to know.
Not mandatory (Score:4, Insightful)
Use a passcode. Or no security at all...
Loser techno-pundit writes clickbait, gets clicks (Score:3, Funny)
OMG, this door thing is creepy. There's a window where someone can look at me but I can't look at them, and they need to actually let me in! I can't just walk into a cave anymore! WTF!
You can burn your fingerprints, (Score:2)
Security Cameras (Score:2)
I wonder if the author minds that every store that he shops in and restaurant that he visits records his face on their video surveillance systems? Sure, maybe it's 2D instead of 3D, but much more pervasive.
Normalization isn't good, but we're already past.. (Score:3)
I'll agree with the author with one single thing: it really isn't good that the face recognition tech is getting normalized and spread out as much, which is something that Apple tends to do through it's cult like fanbase and media love affair.
But let's be realistic for a moment here. First of all, public security cameras are already a thing, plus dashcams in some countries. And plenty of relatively good software for face recognition and identification are already out there, in real time and without any need for special cameras. In fact, we're already over face recognition and now encroaching on general recognition which is a full complexity step beyond it. Software that can use real time input of regular cameras to identify not only face, but also objects, animals, landscapes, even with some interpretation about the data. Not only that, the tech and code is already open source:
https://pjreddie.com/darknet/y... [pjreddie.com]
For this particular application of surveillance technology, Apple isn't going to make much of a difference with a Face ID thing in their smartphones... we're already past Orwellian surveillance.
Second, iPhone X isn't even the first to do it. Samsung already had both face recognition and iris recognition in the failed Note S7, current S8, Note 8 and one Galaxy Tab. Not to mention how Microsoft came with Windows Hello years ago. So the timeframe for panicking has already passed if it's about personal devices with facial scanners.
The tech is already here, and no matter what one or another company does, it will be developed and used. Unfortunately, governments, policies and law hasn't quite catched up to the dangers of so much erosion of privacy, but we'll eventually have to get there, probably not without a very horrible round of feeling the consequences of living in a society that doesn't have almost any privacy protection anymore.
But like I said, it's too late to panic. In fact, it's the sort of short sightedness that lead us to this situation. If people are really feeling creeped out only now because Apple released some new phone with a whole bunch of old tech borrowed from past devices, then people are really trailing behind times.
Apple even sometimes tries to save face posing as a costumer friendly corporation that cares for stuff like privacy, but that's not where people should be looking at. It's governments, governmental agencies, the frequent overstepping of citizens rights, all the revelations that came from multiple whistleblower cases... you see, nothing is changing. There is no public outcry and outrage. The Snowden leaks would have to have ended in a complete revolution and overturning of political power to stop something like an Orwellian dystopia. It's too late now. It certainly won't be as obvious or as clear as in, say, the 1984 novel, but it's already happening, make no mistake.
You can have absolute certainty that DARPA is probably already funding multiple projects for robots and cameras with advanced facial and object recognition cameras to be potentially deployed in several scenarios in the future. You can bet that autonomous cars in the future will do double duty in identifying people and potential criminal scenarios. We already live in a suveillance state, and things are only going to get worse, particularly with governments that are all about bravado, show of strength, and activelly persecuting citizens inside of their own nation because of their skin color or previous nationality. Apple is but a drop in the ocean.
OP has no idea how any of this works (Score:2)
The OP is clearly ignorant of how the secure enclave works, or really any of the concept of operations of the Touch ID and/or Face ID sensors. Touch ID and Face ID both require the setting of a minimum 6 digit passcode for the device, as a backstop for the biometric sensor. The passcode is required for unlock after a device is rebooted, if the device ever goes more than 48 hours without being unlocked, and after 5 consecutive unsuccessful unlock attempts using the biometric sensor. FFS Craig Federighi (unin
I don't get it. Please clue me in. (Score:3)
I honestly don't get it. And I would really love to understand, I do.
What I can observe is that iPhones lose features that I would actually use and gain features that I can't really identify a sensible use for. In other words, to me they become inferior with every incarnation.
I can only assume that this is not the case in general, because the newer models of iPhones still sell in approximately the same number as the older models did when they came out. There has to be a reason for this. And please refrain from trolling like "because people are dumb", that's rarely the case. There are certainly cases of people who'd buy anything from brand X because ... reasons, but after 2-3 models of getting increasingly inferior products, they would stop doing it. So they actually must deem those products satisfactory.
And this is the part I don't get.
Do people really want these features? The unlock-by-fingerprint, unlock-by-face and the other recent additions that I'd call gimmicks at best and security risks at worst? While at the same time not missing the ability to attach headphones, replace the battery (or any part for that matter), use the software of their choice instead of what the vendor deems "appropriate" and so many other things where I simply cannot fathom why one would put up with it.
What the hell is the appeal of this thing? I got used to not fully understanding the motivation humans have, but why they actually consider newer models of iPhones superior to their (in my opinion) more versatile and useful older models completely puzzles me.
Does Apple's website detect and censor negatives? (Score:3)
The Apple website (on several occasions) rejects my negative comments. Usually I'll be trying to describe my problem and the context, but at some point I apparently become too negative and the Apple website says it can't save the draft, and once that happens, whatever I've written cannot be posted. Doesn't seem possible to undo or reset the flag, whatever it is.
Has anyone else experienced this? If you are asking a question or making a comment in the Apple "Discussions", but your tone becomes too negative, then your comment suddenly becomes unpublishable? I suppose it could be based on human moderation, but I know that some of the sentiment analysis systems are becoming powerful enough to do it automatically without expensive and clumsy human beings in the loop.
Details of my most recent experience at https://slashdot.org/journal/2... [slashdot.org], but this isn't the first time I've seen it. I think Apple has decided they need to control the tone of discussions or no one will pay $1,000 for their latest and greatest iPhone.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't have a cover but I don't place my finger on the back. I hold it by the sides like a normal human being. A fingerprint scanner in the back of a phone is like a steering wheel in the back of your seat.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, gotta agree with you there. My fingers are never on the back of my phone - and wouldn't be, even if I didn't use a case.
Re: (Score:2)
Arrested Development had prior art on this.