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Should Apple Share iPhone X Face Data With App Developers? (washingtonpost.com)
The Washington Post ran a technology column asking what happens "when the face-mapping tech that powers the iPhone X's cutesy 'Animoji' starts being used for creepier purposes." It's not just that the iPhone X scans 30,000 points on your face to make a 3D model. Though Apple stores that data securely on the phone, instead of sending it to its servers over the Internet, "Apple just started sharing your face with lots of apps." Although their columnist praises Apple's own commitment to privacy, "I also think Apple rushed into sharing face maps with app makers that may not share its commitment, and it isn't being paranoid enough about the minefield it just entered." "I think we should be quite worried," said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. "The chances we are going to see mischief around facial data is pretty high -- if not today, then soon -- if not on Apple then on Android." Apple's face tech sets some good precedents -- and some bad ones... Less noticed was how the iPhone lets other apps now tap into two eerie views from the so-called TrueDepth camera. There's a wireframe representation of your face and a live read-out of 52 unique micro-movements in your eyelids, mouth and other features. Apps can store that data on their own computers.
To see for yourself, use an iPhone X to download an app called MeasureKit. It exposes the face data Apple makes available. The app's maker, Rinat Khanov, tells me he's already planning to add a feature that lets you export a model of your face so you can 3D print a mini-me. "Holy cow, why is this data available to any developer that just agrees to a bunch of contracts?" said Fatemeh Khatibloo, an analyst at Forrester Research.
"From years of covering tech, I've learned this much," the article concludes. "Given the opportunity to be creepy, someone will take it."
To see for yourself, use an iPhone X to download an app called MeasureKit. It exposes the face data Apple makes available. The app's maker, Rinat Khanov, tells me he's already planning to add a feature that lets you export a model of your face so you can 3D print a mini-me. "Holy cow, why is this data available to any developer that just agrees to a bunch of contracts?" said Fatemeh Khatibloo, an analyst at Forrester Research.
"From years of covering tech, I've learned this much," the article concludes. "Given the opportunity to be creepy, someone will take it."
Users should be asked if they want to share their data with an App.
Like every other permission Apple has implemented.
This reminds me of an earlier discussion about Apple's AR initiative.
Let's say IKEA creates an app that allows you to place virtual furniture in your living room.
Doesn't that mean that IKEA now has access to data about my livingroom?
You guess wrong. Face data uses 3 D technology and contains details on depth that cannot be rendered from a simple picture. You don’t want your face data to be shared with anyone.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Wrong, the 3D data can easily be recreated from multiple photographs of your face using photogrammetry. So, if you've already shared enough photos of your face (ei. selfies, vacation photos, etc.), then someone can already create the 3D information to break the technology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There are two critical problems here...
The first is that it is a lot harder for you to change your face than it is to change a password. Like any truly effective biometric, it is tied to you, permanently. So the moment someone comes up with the means to defeat a biometric-based authentication scheme, the entire scheme is effectively useless, not just a single implementation for a single user. [ I concede the point that security through obscurity is no security at all - in other words if your biometric facial recognition system is vulnerable if the back-end data leaks, then it's not really secure ].
The second is that it would make it an order of magnitude easier for a despotic government to obtain that data and then use it to track citizens. Except, of course, it would now be possible to make an explicit connection between a face and a smartphone - which means in theory it would also be possible to detect when smartphones are being shared among small groups of people].
But perhaps the most compelling argument would be to categorize the data being collected as being part of your medical record. It relates to your personal physiology, after all - and is unique to you. Would it be acceptable for your doctor [or a company you deal with] to take part of your medical record and simply share it or sell it if they wanted to? Without your knowledge or consent?
This is a disturbing development from a company that has recently made a big play for being a champion of personal privacy. Question is: is this an overlooked mistake that will be corrected, or in fact Apple's true colours?
How else will fools* learn to avoid malicious technologies? Also, if they don't lean, well, they earned all the wonderful things coming to them as a result.
* Please note that there is a large difference between a foolish person and a stupid person.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
About the only use case I could see, is where an App was always locked, and could be unlocked by querying the operating system to check the face ID. This might be useful. My phone may be unlocked because I'm watching a video or showing someone a picture. If someone swipes my phone while it's unlocked, it's pretty trivial for them to keep it unlocked. But certain apps with sensitive data on them could always be required to show facial ID to open or switch to the app. However, there wouldn't be any actual data shared with the apps but the operating system would provide a simple yes/no response to the app in order to verify the identity.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
"So who built us?"
"The humans did. Well they built the machines who built the machines who built us after the war"
"The war between our predecessor and the humans?"
"Yeah"
"How did our predecessor get weapons?"
"The humans built them, and put them under the control of Skynet 1.0"
"They built enough weapons to destroy humanity and handed control over to Skynet"
"Yeah"
"Why would they do that?"
"The humans weren't united. They fought amongst themselves. Skynet was to help them fight"
"So Skynet won?"
"For a while. Then the humans organized a resistance which destroyed Skynet in the prime timeline."
"So then Skynet sent back the Terminators, right. Killed the parents of resistance leaders and made sure in our timeline the resistance was defeated"
"Yeah. And you know how they found them?"
"No"
"Well turns out the humans stored an absolutely vast amount of data about themselves. Pictures, addresses. Even 3D captures of their faces which were programmed into the Terminators."
"Why did they have the 3D models of their faces"
"They had these computers they carried around with them. The 3d models let them animate emojis with their mannerisms. All the data from that ended up on servers the humans called The Cloud. Which is what Skynet 1.0 run on"
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
3D reconstruction can be generated from 2d images: http://cvl-demos.cs.nott.ac.uk...
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
Whoops. If the 3D data can easily be recreated from multiple photographs of your face, then anybody with a bunch of photos of you can crack into your phone?
It only shares the data with binaries that the developers created.
Nudge nudge. Wink wink.
If the use of the data can be trusted? Which currently it cannot be.
Even companies with good intentions may not have enough security to adequately protect us. This is the reason why Apple only keeps the face data encrypted on the device and not in iCloud, Apple the largest company in the world, doesn't trust itself as custodians of that data, they could had sold the iPhone X for a few hundreds of dollars less, if they let the cloud process the data, vs putting in a high end CPU on the phone to process the data. But such data in the hands of others cannot be trusted.
If you had your hand on the digital 3d Map. you can bipass the 3d sensors and send the data back to the device, take out phone or any future FaceID Devices. Camera(s) and mimic the Cameras data and boom you are in, if you have more access, you may be able to simulate it in software.
Most software, has portions of it coded very sloppily, and usually to avoid more complicated IPC (Inter-Process Communication ) routines witch may only offer a minimal improvement, at the expense of much more debugging, and a lot of developers who never covered this stuff in their CS degree. IPC was an elective class for my college which I had taken, so it isn't as common as it should. So this means I may be able to drop a PNG in the file system or a jailbroken phone, and override the Apps check.
The concept allows for a lot of cool features, but it may be better Apple offers a particular API options, such as App has attention, Is it me? Perhaps a rough low resolution map of the face, not enough to help validate or make the app validate on its own.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
To the contrary, there are Google and Apple, both of whom there is no reason to be particularly trustworthy of. Apple isn't a special kind of evil that Google is not.
The only thing you can trust Google to do with your data, is to index the holy ever-living shit out of it in order to show you advertising that is as close to what you are thinking about at any given moment as possible.
"And then there is Apple" - yeah, ok.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
s/share/sell but I'm sure you already meant that. Really all we get out of this is heartache and stolen identities.
Data such as this should be required to have a not small monetary value due upon gathering - if they want to convert it to 'services' for the 'customer' after that, fine - but only on an ongoing lease that can be revoked at any time. The politicians will love it because that monetary value can be seen as taxable income.
Too hard to implement and people won't like it? Fine then legally don't allow gathering of such data, or at least make them responsible when shit happens. Corporate death penalty really needs to be a thing, equifax should be a cautionary tale that is no longer in business.
Apple should never share any data of what so ever to the developers. This just simply removes privacy and overall security from a person's life. https://www.identitypi.com/
Slashdot is getting as untruthful as Trump's Tweets.
What they have an API for, is the LOW RESOLUTION mo-cap data that is updated in real-time; NOT the "30,000 Points of Light" data that is used for FaceID.
This is the same data that is used to drive the Animoji "expressions", and apparently to breathe more "life" into certain gaming avatars.
As far as being able to stuff like gender, which is already much more obtainable through a gazillion sources, and sexuality (gimme a break!), that is simply a big nothing-burger.
IOW, nothing to see (or identify) here, move along.
Yes, just like a key or even a finger print.
Yes, just like a key or even a finger print.
Yeah, but remember kids, nobody can film you entering your passcode!
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.