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Apple Patenting a Way To Collect Fingerprints, Photos of Thieves (appleinsider.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Apple Insider: As published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple's invention covering "Biometric capture for unauthorized user identification" details the simple but brilliant -- and legally fuzzy -- idea of using an iPhone or iPad's Touch ID module, camera and other sensors to capture and store information about a potential thief. Apple's patent is also governed by device triggers, though different constraints might be applied to unauthorized user data aggregation. For example, in one embodiment a single failed authentication triggers the immediate capture of fingerprint data and a picture of the user. In other cases, the device might be configured to evaluate the factors that ultimately trigger biometric capture based on a set of defaults defined by internal security protocols or the user. Interestingly, the patent application mentions machine learning as a potential solution for deciding when to capture biometric data and how to manage it. Other data can augment the biometric information, for example time stamps, device location, speed, air pressure, audio data and more, all collected and logged as background operations. The deemed unauthorized user's data is then either stored locally on the device or sent to a remote server for further evaluation.
TFA doesn't say why this would be legally fuzzy.
Apple may have to come very clean about how this works or it may not hold up in court.
so a killer feature (hehe) would be a 10kva electric shock at the thumb reader.
I wish they could make an anti theft device that would hit the thief with an electric shock. Or maybe a blade of some sort that comes out and quickly chops off the thief's hand/fingers.
I admit the implementation details are many, and, difficult to overcome.
I hate me some thieves. Frikkin low life scum. HATE 'EM!
this will just be used to collect biometric data of anyone who touches the phone and then be coupled later with other data to mine for ad scum and other equally vile and nefarious purposes?
I think it's interesting that Tim Cook comes out as some big privacy advocate but iDevices have unique advertiser ids and they're doing shit like this. It's more like who-can-be-most-evil-first race to the bottom of totalitarian turn key nightmare waiting to happen.
A burglar in someone else's house has no expectation of privacy. A thief using someone else's property has no expectation of privacy.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
- Oops sorry, we thought you were a thief
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Why do this when we can't even have a national stolen esn/imei database?
Timothy? you, again?
So, since those little utilities of the 90s and 00s that used your web cam to snap a picture whenever someone logged in and/or every X minutes of computer usage weren't designed for cell phones, Apple is allowed to patent the same thing but on a mobile device.
How is this deserving of a patent? It's blindingly obvious to use the sensors available on a device to do their job? And activating the sensors has been done before, like activating a camera remotely or the feature built-in to phones now to get the GPS remotely. As soon as I heard about them adding fingerprint sensors to phones I immediately about how useful it would be to get the fingerprints of thieves.
Fingerprints of all people touching the device in any manner should be automatically sent to the FBI and local police station with date stamp and GPS location to aid in apprehending criminals.
My dad's house just got robed a few weeks ago, some idiot stole some electronics and vandalized the place, the police told him there wasn't time or manpower to look for fingerprints. My dad found a good set around a door frame and photographed it himself, they told him they were not interested in pursuing the case because there were murders and drug cases much more important.
The FBI said if there wasn't anything stollen more than $50k, they wouldn't do anything.
He's a retired ex-vietnam vet now with a vendetta.
He was able to get a fingerprint search done through an alternate channel, and now has a name and last known address of the drug-head that did it. Fortunately for that idiot (who's currently wanted in two states for drug and parole violations), the last know address was bogus. The hunt continues though.
Don't mess with retired folks.
The police and FBI are not for the people.
My guess is that Apple isn't exactly for the people ether, but if they can remotely and completely disable stolen hardware, it's more business for them. I'm in favor of stolen goods usually getting bricked.
...Apple's attitude towards security?
If this gets widely deployed then anyone attempting unauthorized use of an iphone will know to hold it so their face is not in view of the camera and to use something other than their fingertip (like their knuckle) to touch the screen.
The end result will be that the only data collected will be that of legitimate users who boffed the unlock process.
Presumption of innocence is not just for the State, ya know. No actor may legally assume guilt and deprive someone of their rights. Apple has no right to collect intimate, non-plain-view evidence about me without my consent just because its software thinks I MIGHT be a thief. Touching an iPhone does not rise to a specific and articulable fact that would lead a reasonable person to believe that criminal activity is afoot.
Given the idea (which is old) 'wouldn't it be nice to be able to find people who steal phones' - the idea of 'let's use all the sensors in the phone to do so' is what occurs to anyone with the tiniest modicum of a clue in under a second.
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/...
http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Mar...
'What's working
Geolocation info
Network info
Take screenshot
List of running programs '
Are just a couple of the several year old things Ihappened to know of.
There are currently about 7 billion potential thieves on planet earth.
Timmy (Queer CEO, Apple Inc., and iPhone Inc.) is disparate to corner the market of false identification.
There have been several articles on /. about high-profile people taping off their laptop cameras as they're afraid of it being switched on without them knowing, recording whatever they're doing.
Laptop cameras have an LED to indicate they're active - some may be circumvented and switched on without triggering that indicator, sure, but not all and it's not that easy. Mobile phone cameras don't even have such an LED, there is no way to see when I look at my phone whether a camera is active or not. A camera, as there are two on my phone, as are on most smart phones.
Maybe we should start putting tape over our phone's cameras, just like we do with our laptops? Starting with the front-facing one? I'm sure phones are easier to hack, considering phone's OSes not being updated as much as they should be there will be lots of vulnerable phones out there open to attack.
#whatcouldpossiblygowrong
I thought most fingerprint readers were by design not supposed to reveal a whole fingerprint image, only representative data for matching purposes (whorl/junction info). For legal purposes, don't they need to capture the true fingerprint image though, for later unimpeded matching? Otherwise the only way to match thief to data would be to have an iDevice ID machine at a police station for the perp to swipe prints with to see if the data matches. Unless Apple is offering to pregenerate their data from FBI fingerprint image databases...
So Apple products become toxic: Don't touch it! Don't point even! And you haven't seen enough of that one, before it saw you.
To lock out people who aren't their customers from anti-theft tech. Big hearted guys.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_(flamethrower)
"only a few hundred had been sold"
Ok. I'm not actually claiming prior art. But...
For some time now, every time I have pressed the biometric start button on an iDevice or Galaxy device, I've had a thought in the back of my mind saying; "I wonder if this device has a security app or something that just snapped my picture and finger print". This usually spirals into thoughts about how would I know, who would collect the information, how would it be used/leaked/exploited...
It's just a momentary thought, but I've literally been having it every time I push the button for a year or more. Now this patent shows up.
Scope creep to zero privacy?
That'll never happen.
It's never happened before either.
Trust us.
We'll protect your privacy.
All personally identifiable data is anonymized.
You have nothing to worry about.
Do you have something to hide?
You privacy nuts are really paranoid and melodramatic...
Breach. Hax. LOLOLOLOLOLOL
My iPhone was stolen recently; I put it in "lost mode" as soon as I could, and two days later it surfaced 1'000 km (and 2 countries...) away. I would have been nice if it could have captured the thief's fingerprint. As long as this feature is only actived in "lost mode", I don't see legal issues.
I don't think that such a feature would have a great impact on how many stolen iPhones are recovered; however, it may reduce the number of stolen ones.
i only have my thumb and middle fingers in my phone, on purpose, and still accidentally pointer finger it sometimes. boy is apple going to be surprised when i accidentally use my penis.
Cerberus (and probably others) has had the ability to take a photo on failed auth for at least a few years, and if I remember correctly, it's configurable as to how many auth attempts it takes before it snaps a photo.
Oh the jokes could just roll on and on with this one.