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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.
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.
10Kva? 10,000 VoltAmps eh? Quite shocking if the voltage is high enough. Somehow I think that starting with a 3.3V battery you are going to struggle to get 10Kva for more than a very short time.... Which is likely not to actually "kill" anything but the phone...
It's amps, not volts that kill you BTW, and you are going to need to apply a LOT of energy to some hapless thief's thumb to kill them. So if you crank up the voltage to say 10K Volts AC and can deliver 1 amp for a millisecond, you can shock them but You are more likely to just piss them off than harm them...
- Oops sorry, we thought you were a thief
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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.
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.
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 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.
Actually, I can presume anything I want about anyone I want. I just can't act on it. That's when the evidence has to be presented to a court (usually via law enforcement authorities, but that's not a hard and fast rule). The court can then issue warrants, if they believe the evidence constitutes sufficient justification for further investigation or arrest.
I have security cameras on the front of my house. They snap pictures of everything that passes in front of them. Should a burglary of my house or the neighbors occur, it is quite reasonable that the police/courts will base further action upon the stored video that might reasonably be related to the crime. Same idea with the iPhone.
Have gnu, will travel.
#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...
You can get a decent jolt with just a 3.3v battery and a transformer (like the kind found in radios, camera flash, etc.) It won't kill you, but if you aren't expecting it and are already in a tense state (like one might be while escaping after robbing somebody) it'll probably make you panic for a bit and make you drop what you're doing.
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.
Is that why they keep taking parts out, to increase battery size not for longer use but more potent zaps?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
You need yourself a Magnavolt system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
It's scary. National governments aren't allowed to collect data on us and spy on us (legally at least, we all know they do illegally behind our backs), but private corporations are allowed to collect data on us and spy on us all they want.
At some point there will have to be some major consumer rights movement to protect from this. The data collected on us doesn't just exist on the websites of whoever collects it, but also in the Russian hackers cloud storage, and everyone they sell their information to. The companies collecting our data hasn't been particulary good at defending it. Any level 1 shadowrunner can steal it.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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.
Now you've cracked the glass screen.
Oh. Wait.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.