The Rant Wheel lands on Apple’s Face ID

There’s something inherently spooky about facial recognition.

Transcribed from Crooked Media’s Erin Ryan on Saturday’s Lovett or Leave It podcast (49:30):

The reason I’m ranting about facial recognition is that ICE is trying to access a facial recognition database in enforcing immigration law. Which I find extremely… a violation of civil rights and terrible.

At the same time I would like to point out that people have been willingly giving up their face to tech companies for years. Every time you take a picture with like Snapchat or any app at all (emphasis mine) you’re sending a picture of your face to that app. If you are getting an app for free and you’re sending your face to it and it sends it back as like a sexy puppy, you’re the product. They’re using your face for something. They’re not just giving you this sexy puppy filter for fun for them. They’re using your face.

Facial recognition, I think, is just a f…ing cancer on America. I don’t think anybody should buy the iPhone X. And I won’t buy the iPhone X (emphasis, again, mine) because it like uses your face to log in.

[At this point the discussion degenerates into unprintable jokes about the Measure app.]

My take: Apple has its work cut out for it.

Meanwhile, I sent this excerpt from Apple’s Face ID pdf to Erin “witch pun” Ryan @morninggloria:

Face ID data, including mathematical representations of your face, is encrypted and only available to the Secure Enclave. This data never leaves the device. It is not sent to Apple, nor is it included in device backups.

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