facial recognition

Facial recognition, a weapon?

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

File this under “Sigh! We knew this was coming.”

The story is breaking that protesters are being tracked down by facial recognition software in several cities. But more alarming is how in Hong Kong, which is erupting right now, police are seeking out protesters, then grabbing their phones, and attempting to use the facial recognition software on the phones to unlock their phones.

Hong Kong was a colony of Britain until 1997, but is now a ‘special administrative region’ of China.

“Oh, how neat!” some people thought, when Hong Kong announced that it has facial recognition software in the airport so that passengers could pass through immigration and security smoothly. Likewise so many now use door bell cameras (such as Nest and Hello) that have facial recognition, not realizing the vulnerabilities they could bring.

Facial recognition is a short stop from racial and social profiling. Why is it that few people seem to care?

A need to ‘register’ your face –and other tech silliness

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

As if we don’t have enough to be concerned about! Users of the iPhone X must ‘register’ their faces so that facial recognition –a feature that everyone seems to be fawning over– works.

I am not making this up. This was reported where an iPhone user had to repeatedly ‘register’ her face because her 10-year old son unwittingly unlocked her phone. The story cites Wired reporter Andy Greenberg who :

suggested that Sherwani re-register her face to see what would happen. Upon doing so, the iPhone X no longer allowed Ammar access. Interestingly, after Sherwani tried registering her face again a few hours later in the same indoor, nighttime lighting conditions in which she first set up her iPhone X, the son was able to regain access with his face.

Does this mean that:

  • Some day there will be a facial registry, somewhere in the Cloud? For now, it’s on the device.
  • There might be an after-market for 3-D printed facial masks to crack iPhones? Apple is skeptical. Of course!