With the launch of iPhone X, on Sept. 12, Apple replaced the fingerprint scanner Touch ID with an advanced face recognition technology named Face ID which scans your face and decides it’s you.
However, a day after its introduction to the world, US Senate AI Franken is pressing Apple to share details of privacy and security safeguards that the company has put in place for the Face ID, reported the recode.
His concerns: Apple may use faceprints collected by the technology “to benefit other sectors of business, sell it to third parties for surveillance purposes, or receive law enforcement requests to access it facial recognition system – eventual uses that may not be contemplated by Apple customers.”
At the launch, Apple Senior Vice President of Marketing Phil Schiller said that individual’s facial-recognition data will retain on his/her iPhone, and will not be collected on cloud server operated by Apple.
Despite it, Franken questions whether Apple or a third party has the ability “either remotely or through physical access to the device” to “extract and obtain usable faceprint data from the iPhone X.”
We all remember the furore case of 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif that landed Apple into a battle with Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which asked Apple to break into the culprit’s iPhone through Touch ID, but after the company’s denial, did itself using a special tool.
The Democratic lawmaker wants to know how Apple will deal with requests for “faceprint data or the Face ID system.”
Though Apple has stated that the firm has no plans to allow any third party applications access to the FaceID system or its faceprint data, Franken has asked the company to assure it again.
