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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.
I don't see what's legally fuzzy about this either. Since when did privacy rights of thieves trump owner's rights to recover their property?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
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.
- Oops sorry, we thought you were a thief
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Timothy? you, again?
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.
Is that a legal opinion or a "common sense" one?
I don't have a clue what the law is on this matter and am genuinely interested.
IANAL but I don't think you need to even get to the "right to privacy" legal theory. It's your device, and you can give it permission to capture and store biometric data and upload it to the cloud. If somebody picks up and uses your device, any information they give it, biometric or otherwise, becomes your information provided it isn't trademarked or copyrighted, and even if they somehow manage to do those things for their biometric data and likeness of their face, capturing it for your own personal use (submitting it as evidence, for example) would easily fall under fair use.
The FBI's dream come true — collect the fingerprints of every citizen.
You know it will happen.
J
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
Because the software doesn't know who is a thief and who is a legitimate user. It only track authentication errors.
It is probably legal but Apple has to be careful before implementing it especially if it is on by default.
For example, imagine you are drunk, you try to unlock your phone and fail (because you are drunk). The phone takes a picture of you and sends it to where you don't want drunk pictures of you to end up. If it is the default behavior, I think you can claim some invasion of privacy.