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App Developer Access To iPhone X Face Data Spooks Some Privacy Experts (reuters.com)
A reader shares a report: Apple won accolades from privacy experts in September for assuring that facial data used to unlock its new iPhone X would be securely stored on the phone itself. But Apple's privacy promises do not extend to the thousands of app developers who will gain access to facial data in order to build entertainment features for iPhone X customers, such as pinning a three-dimensional mask to their face for a selfie or letting a video game character mirror the player's real-world facial expressions. Apple allows developers to take certain facial data off the phone as long as they agree to seek customer permission and not sell the data to third parties, among other terms in a contract seen by Reuters. App makers who want to use the new camera on the iPhone X can capture a rough map of a user's face and a stream of more than 50 kinds of facial expressions. This data, which can be removed from the phone and stored on a developer's own servers, can help monitor how often users blink, smile or even raise an eyebrow.
Good luck changing your face when the inevitable data breach happens!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
...of course, you have to give them permission to do so, just the same as with this data, apparently.
As such, I fail to see the concern here. If an app requests that permission, simply deny it if it's a concern for you. I'm glad my weather app can grab my current location to give me useful information as I changed locations throughout the day. I'm glad Shazam or whatnot can use the mic to tell me what song is playing. I'm glad my camera apps can access the camera. And it's not outlandish to believe that I may eventually be glad that some form of facial data is getting synced via third-party servers between my devices.
But that'll be my call to make if and when I ever have a phone with these sorts of features, because without my permission, they can't do jack squat, so this whole topic is rather moot.
Apple allows developers to take certain facial data off the phone as long as they agree to seek customer permission and not sell the data to third parties
My sides! Ow! Please, stop, you're killing me!
I agree to seek customer permission via small font legalese hidden in a click-through TOS and I agree not sell the data to third parties, instead I will sell the company with collected data itself.
This is duh. Did you think Apple added this "feature" for security? They added it to get biometric data. No one wants to unlock a phone with a face. Just just a PIN. Most people don't even want to bother with PINs or security at all.
No actual security expert would be that worried if just your user name was stolen. Your face is publically displayed in a fair resolution already, and likely appears in governmental and private databases. Actual experts that say biological scans should be your only authentication on important systems aren't experts. It wouldn't be that big a deal at this point for a higher res scan of your face to leak out if there wasn't anything you could do or access with it, like say a access persons phone with all the email, social media, etc, maybe even banking. Sadly, these types of scans will probably be widely used as your only authentication, often remotely, and probably at some point on critical systems. There is no stopping stupid, this is what real experts worry about.
Sorry, but I'm not giving my biometric information to Apple, an app developer, or pretty much anybody else unless it's fucking required by law
Ever sent a photo of yourself to anyone via any app or online service?
This is no different than letting Snapchat do it or anything else. Developers can't do it without the user's knowledge, and it isn't giving apps a detailed map of your individual face.
There's basically zero evidence to suggest that Apple is the least bit interested in selling your personal info to anyone. That would be a minuscule revenue stream compared to the billions of dollars they make off of iPhones; and it would put those much more substantial revenue streams at risk. They've made privacy & security part of their brand.
If "google team" and even China already can do a lot of reconstruction from machine learning, even with heavily pixelated sources such as old pics and bad IPCams, I am guessing it won't be long before the "rough map" these apps get can be used for user tagging, and even authentication. Back with fingerprint scans, all the info was at the very least kept safe on hardware and is NEVER directly accessible to apps in any form, other than a boolean stuff like "valid" or "denied" access for authentication. Getting some map, even if pre-processed to suck balls, is an open gateway for fooling FaceID, and I think Apple will be in serious trouble even if they are intentionally adding digital watermarks that attempt to prevent such hacking. I mean, even denuvo gets cracked easily these days, I highly doubt any form of encryption or anti-tampering is enough for keeping "rough data" completely fail-proof, if this data is to be of any use to apps that want to see movement.
Well, that of course assumes the rough map isn't a set of "moods" in the order of magnitude of the hundreds or less. But that pretty much renders the feature "nothing new" material.
1. your thumb-print never leaves the secure enclave of an iPhone, it's not stored electronically anywhere, there's no path for it to be extracted electronically at all. It would be *way* easier to get your thumb print off of a glass then it would to try to electronically hack it out of an iPhone
2. FaceID doesn't use 'image processing' because it doesn't use images, it uses infra-red depth sensing. If you just use it for authentication then it's basically the same deal as the thumbprint; secure enclave and whatnot--it doesn't leave your phone.
3. Apple does not sell your info, ever. Not because they are a naturally good or noble company, but because they would make less money if they did so. Their business model is based on selling physical pieces of hardware, not selling their customer data. They are basically the opposite of Google.
For a very interesting look at all of the types of data being collected today, take a peek at the National Information Exchange Model. or the NIEM on github. The easiest way to look at the data is to download the models and open the niem-????.xlsx spreadsheet (name changes with version). The last time I checked, the rules for adding a schema to this model included a strong requirement that it be in use by two agencies before being eligible because its purpose is "exchange". So, it can be assumed that everything here is in use today.
Spend some time looking and you should find models for storing biometric data ranging from the expected fingerprints, DNA, facial images, scar locations, etc. to other things you may have never thought of such as your gait, lip prints, your lip movement during speech, and your body odor composition. The jxdm models are as or more interesting as the biometrics models and include a lot of biometric model augmentations.
Note that for some of these items such as gait and body odor, you'll need to look back at the 2.1 version of the standard. I don't know when, but at some point I'm guessing they realized this data revealed too much of what they were doing and they pulled some models. The j:PersonAugmentationType entry on the jxdm page was particularly interesting in 2.1.
Facial data flew the coop long ago. There is software available today that can create a 3D facial reconstruction from a single image using a neural network. It's not super accurate, but other software can do it much better with many images. Most people have many images in public whether they know it or not. If you go downtown, how many cameras capture your image? Some cities are now estimated to have an average of three angles on you at any moment.
We shouldn't be concerned about the use of this data by software to deliver us fun, and, down the road a bit, serious features. Unless you want to wear a mask everywhere you go, you can't stop it. Your face, and anything else that can be observed while you're walking down the street, is public data.
We should be concerned about any use of biometric data of any type for authentication on any system that we consider critical or valuable.
Because whoever requests that depth map also has standard camera access and do loads more by cross-referencing photo+map, but I won't go into details before an elitist like Dog-Cow comes running saying I don't know enough of this to discuss it... :D
But I believe the original article states actual data from FaceID will be available to apps, so what you state is not entirely accurate - they do get info from the dot projection system. They should get less fidelity, but that is exactly the argument here - they will extrapolate from the rough map from the dot projection data, and that's step 1 to reverse engineer original data. Of course only time will tell what can be done.
Because whoever requests that depth map also has standard camera access and do loads more by cross-referencing photo+map
Yes, and??? They don't have to do any work to cross-reference, it's all bundled together as it is. But it doesn't matter because as I said it's nothing like the point structure capture taken by FaceID, it's not as detailed AND from an image you do not have all the angles of the face the way FaceID does.
But I believe the original article states actual data from FaceID will be available to apps,
Yes, it does STATE that; however I am an iOS developer and I am telling you that is UTTERY FALSE. There is no API access to that data, period, end of story. You only get access to the camera and depth map features on an image if the camera being used supports that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Go ahead. Keep in mind that any evidence you provide I will dismiss as being "fake".
Do you see now why we don't ask people to prove a negative?