“A day after Apple unveiled its new iPhone X — a device that its owner can unlock using facial recognition — Sen. Al Franken is pressing the tech giant to detail the privacy and security safeguards it has in place for biometric data,” Tony Romm reports for Recode.
“To Franken, the concern is that Apple could use the so-called faceprints it collects through its new unlocking system, called Face ID, ‘to benefit other sectors of its 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,’ the lawmaker said in a letter to the company Wednesday,” Romm reports. “Apple has already addressed some of these early fears: As he debuted the device, for example, Phil Schiller, the company’s senior vice president of marketing, said facial-recognition data would be stored on individual iPhones, not sent to some cloud server operated by Apple.”
“Still, Franken has a number of lingering questions for Apple CEO Tim Cook — including 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.’ That includes law enforcement, as the Democratic lawmaker wants to know how Apple might handle requests ‘faceprint data or the Face ID system itself,'” Romm reports. “Before debuting the newest iPhone, Schiller said the company had relied on more than a billion scans to fine tune its facial-recognition system. To that end, Franken is pressing Apple to detail where it obtained those images. And he also is asking the tech giant to explain whether it’s sufficiently trained Face ID to recognize different genders, races and ages.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Based on an ever-accumulating history (see articles below), Franken seems to strive to attach his name to Apple Inc.
Wonder why?
Franken’s letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook is here.
SEE ALSO:
U.S. Senate Democrat Al Franken urges federal probe of Apple Music – July 23, 2015
U.S. Senate Democrat Al Franken demands answers from Apple CEO Tim Cook over iPhone 5s’ Touch ID – September 20, 2013
U.S. Senator Al Franken presses wireless companies and hardware makers for Carrier IQ answers – December 5, 2011
Senator Al Franken! Paging Senator Al Franken! – December 1, 2011
Apple, Google to face U.S. Senator Al Franken’s subcommittee in mobile privacy hearing – May 9, 2011
U.S. Senator Al Franken demands answers from Apple’s Steve Jobs over iPhone tracking – April 21, 2011
Apple’s Bud Tribble to testify in U.S. Senator Al Franken’s Judiciary Subcommittee hearings on mobile privacy – May 6, 2011
U.S. Senator Al Franken demands answers from Apple’s Steve Jobs over iPhone tracking – April 21, 2011