The new iPhone X with the Face ID function has not yet fallen into the hands of the first buyers, but many are already concerned about the issue of privacy. The US Senate has two issues. The first is whether Apple will provide users with scans to law enforcement agencies and whether the company itself will collect the database for selfish purposes.
US Senator Al Franken sent a letter to the head of Apple Tim Cook with a list of issues that concern him. Many of the policy issues were already announced by the media and experts immediately after the presentation of new products. Then, cybersecurity experts criticized Apple, which stated that the probability of Face ID error in face recognition is one chance per million. Franken also wants to understand exactly how the developers have installed this indicator and what steps were taken to protect them from hacking, informs news. eizvestia. com.
As Recode notes, the company trained the algorithm on the example of a billion photos. One of Franken's first questions - where did Apple get those photos from?. The senator fears that the company will use the algorithm for its own purposes or sell "fingerprints" to other companies, including special services.
During the presentation of new products at Steve Jobs Theater, senior vice president of marketing Phil Schiller explained that all biometric data on the iPhone X will be processed by the processor on the device itself and will not be forwarded to the cloud. However, the senator wants to make sure that Apple will not change this order in the future and will not for any reason store photos of the owner and other people who will be "at gunpoint" Face ID.
Franken wants to understand if the company can get remote or direct access to the device and extract from it the biometric data of the owner of the iPhone X. The senator also asked how Apple would respond to police and other law enforcement requests if they required access to data.
This precedent was already. Last year, the US Justice Department, through the court, demanded from Apple assistance in unlocking the iphone of the criminal who committed the attack in San Bernardino. The device was protected with a normal password, but after several erroneous entries, the system was locked. Apple was required not only to help, but to create or provide a device that would help circumvent the lock. Tim Cook said that the company will not create "loopholes" in its own system under any conditions.
As a result, the FBI managed to crack the iPhone itself, so the proceedings were terminated.
In the technology of face recognition on the iPhone X there is nothing unique - a similar system is valid for Samsung Galaxy Note 8, and it can be deceived by showing a photo of the owner. However, for 10 years since the release of the first iPhone devices Apple have become a mass product that sets new trends. The release of the iPhone X with face recognition popularizes the technology and can make it ubiquitous.