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Cell Phones Learn to Recognize Their Owners' Faces
An anonymous reader writes "Oki Electric this week began marketing a technology that inexpensively adds face recognition to camera-equipped cell phones. Oki's 'Face Sensing Engine' middleware decodes facial images within 280 milliseconds on a 100 MHz ARM9 processor, and can restrict access to mobile devices by recognizing their owners. Its purpose is to safeguard sensitive personal data -- such as email addresses and phone numbers -- in the event of loss or theft of their devices. The technology works by locating and mapping key facial features -- such as eyes, eyebrows, and mouth -- and adapts to changing facial conditions such as winking and smiling, according to Oki."
Although most phones let you make an emergency call no matter what, don't they? I know mine does even when it is pin and keypad locked. You can type pretty much any of the common emergency numbers (911, 112, 000), and it unlocks the phone to call the local emergency number (It appears to nothing until you have typed the entire number). I don't see why these phones would be any different.
Haven't we heard this already half a year ago? http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/02/174 9200
GODDD, is this news? I wonder what they're doing for security.
Even before following TFA's link, I recalled hearing or reading about this when I was in Japan from Dec 04 to Feb 05. So, for this response, I "googled" it, and though I left on 24 Feb, and these links I'm supplying are dated 28 Feb, the news is sourced from material in the making long before that.
OMRON Announces 'OKAO Vision Face Recognition Sensor', World's First Face Recognition Biometric for Mobile Phones
http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=9494
Face-recognition security comes to mobile phones
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS7172421600.html
As for the Omron URL, this is an excerpt:
"To use the unit, the user simply takes his or her own photo. The 'OKAO Vision Face Recognition Sensor' will automatically detect the user and unlock the unit. The identification process takes less than a second from snapping the photograph. Further, their is no need to adjust the camera position when taking the photo. If the face is included in the photo, the sensor will detect the owner automatically."
However, it says nothing to ally to allay fears that a thief could place before the camera a picture of the owner of a stolen camera. It might be possible that the camera may someday have strobes or some thermal sensors that try to detect heat from a human body temp range, but that could be fooled with a transparent "Mission: Impossible" mask of the Gerry Anderson type (I purposely ignored the recent MI stuff since I loath money-grabbing remakes or remakes-in-title).
I suppose a good security feature set would include:
1. thumb or finger sensor with thumb print/fingerprint biometrics
2. retinal scan (with enhancements to determine live/dead eyeballs
3. breath, saliva or mucous tissue sample scan and later match/compare
4. electrolytic sample (to determine voltage of live/dead person)
If they can do that (put a mini-lab in the phone) then probably only CIA, NSA, MI6 and Japan's pending MI6, Mossad, and others would surely buy up these phones, or any other devices so equipped/secured.
Image word: entice, just as this "article" was "enticing"...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Such functionality is actually common in my part of the mobile world (Symbian/UIQ), for example my Motorola A1000 does exactly what you describe and I'd suspect others do as well.
My own idea for protecting content on a mobile phone is to encrypt all personal data, including calendar entries, contacts, SMS messages (in the air as well as on the device) and potentially also VoIP data.