The way everyone's talking, you'd think Apple was taking away the four-digit PIN! But they're not...
The fingerprint ID is just another option, which you don't have to use.
So titles like this are just incorrect. Fingerprint ID isn't taking away any of your rights, because you can still use the PIN just like you always have.
I mean seriously, what the heck is going on here? Why on earth are people getting worked up about this? Sure, the fingerprint ID might be less secure, and it's important to realize that, but nobody's forcing you to use it. According to everything reported so far, the new iPhone is not removing your PIN.
> The fingerprint ID is just another option, which you don't have to use.
It's still important to let people know the potential pitfalls of such a method, even if it's one option amongst many, so they can make an informed choice between the options.
> Why on earth are people getting worked up about this?
Because it has serious implications on your security, both from other people, and from the government (or its actors), implications which are not immediately obvious.
The reason this is a "big deal" is because the finger print ID is one of the 3 (or so) main reasons anyone would/should upgrade to the new iPhone, and if one of the 3 reasons to upgrade isn't a reason anymore due to it's issues, then it's important to make a major mental note of that.
Also, keep in mind that there are a lot of features on the iPhone (such as the key-pad ASCII password option) which even tech-savvy folk don't know about, let alone the layman. This option of using a PIN could be just as hidden unless a big deal is made out of this (educated speculation, I know).
Flashnews from a whisteblower 2016: in joint cooperation with DEA, NSA and FBI, Apple had updated their software to capture users fingerprints while they touch the screen and send those to The National Anti-Terrorism and Happiness Database, guarded by the NSA.
For years Apple has been denying direct access to finger-print reader, built-in behind your device's screen, but recent revelation shows that the backdoor is being widely used by the US government.
- "I didn't know they can do that, but hey if it keeps us safe then why not?" - says Jennifer Stone, Apple products fan. - "You know after we put the boots on Syrian grounds there has been so much terror retaliation on our soil that probably at some point they would require to finger-print every American, but this way thanks to my Apple device, the government has actually saved me a trip to the local police department for a full finger-print read. Its all good, you know. yolo!".
EDIT: breaking news September 11, 2020. A North Korean terrorist organization successfully hacked into NSA mainframe and downloaded over 25 terrabytes of data related to american's social security records and credit card information. they also obtained driver's license database as well as DNA and fingerprinting records for over 300 million americans. The US government is going into full shut down; starting tomorrow everyone will start receiving new credit cards, new social security numbers as well as new drivers license. Since DNA and fingerprinting information can be reproduced and faked quite cheaply, starting tomorrow no criminal case in the US legal system will be tried based on the evidence introduced from said sources.
- When 911 happened, we had terrorist using our infrastructure, our planes, our airports and our buildings to cause terror. Who would have known that 20 years later storing detailed information on 300 million Americans under one roof in one building would be so hazardous to the National Security. - said independent security contractor.
Honestly, I think it's because attacking Apple seems to be in vogue nowadays. Thus, if you have an article attacking Apple, you can guarantee higher click-thru rates.
It really makes no sense. Fingerprint sensors have been built into Android phones (Atrix 4G comes to mind) since 2011 and in Windows laptops for many, many years. The sheer amount of articles discussing the Touch ID is actually astounding when you remember that Google's Face Unlock was cracked originally by a _photo_ of the user and then cracked with _two_ photos of the person. There are real, actually implemented cracks for Android's lock screen but that's been grossly overshadowed by the conceptual idea of possibly cracking Apple's Touch ID.
Ugh, no. This isn't an Apple vs Google or Apple against the world issue.
Wired is simply reporting the news and making people aware of potential pitfalls with using fingerprint ID on a device like this. Smartphones and tables are very popular now so what is in vogue is reporting on them.
Thanks to revelations of NSA surveillance of the last few months, these privacy-related topics are coming up more frequently now.
No, not referring to NSA at all, and nothing specific just my overall impression. I was just trying to say that for many years I dismissed the critics of Microsoft as being biased for various reasons and was somewhat a MS defender. I now think they suck, not in the way an Apple fanboy thinks they suck, just an intangible impression.
The endless criticism of Microsoft over the last 20 years was generally that they're not open source and had anti-competitive practices (ex, the browser wars.) How exactly has Microsoft's comeuppance had anything to do with these aspects? Their fall has been due to their shitty design sense and their inability to see the PC era ending.
The criticism has also been that they were acquiring/copying and bullying their way to dominance, which finally seems to be their downfall in an era where innovation and leading the market is a winning strategy. My comment related to the parent's observation that attacking Apple is in vogue not specifically to the fingerprint tech.
I would suggest that Apple is heading the same way but not literally. They are certainly closed source, about as bad as it gets, they are using their financial and political muscle to bully competitors and suppliers, they are coming back to the field in terms of innovation....
The article is misleading. It is not a choice between a fingerprint or a PIN.
Touch ID requires both a fingerprint and a PIN. If the phone hasn't been unlocked in 48 hours or has been rebooted, you have to enter the PIN. This would probably protect your 5th amendment rights in the case of going to court (since it would probably take >48 hours).
Touch ID is there to make PINs more widely adopted, by minimizing the inconvenience of entering a PIN every single time. That's a great boost for security.
Excellent point, though once police departments realize this fact, they may force arrested people to immediately unlock their phones, or use their fingerprints, which they already collect, to do it.
It would be nice if you could adjust the 48 hour timeout.
>The way everyone's talking, you'd think Apple was taking away the four-digit PIN! But they're not...
The fingerprint ID is just another option, which you don't have to use.
That's never how it works. Today it's "just another option", a few years down the line it's mandatory.
And "not having to use" does not equal "people will not use it unless they are fully aware of possible consequences" anyway.
That's just FUD. And saying baseless things like "that's never how it works", that's just fearmongering, not contributing to the conversation. It doesn't even make sense.
There are millions (hundreds of thousands? you get my point) of fingerprint readers out there. Suddenly Apple builds one in, an additional feature, and people start inventing conspiracy theories. People are completely confusing real issues (recent NSA disclosures) with totally imaginary ones. It's getting tiring.
They take a lot of fingerprints, but don't seem to catch many people.
> The U.S. government has been collecting digital fingerprints and photographs of nearly all non-citizens aged 14 and up entering the country since 2004, officials said, in a Homeland Security program called US-VISIT, at a cost of $1.7 billion.
> [...] On an average day, almost 14,400 international visitors undergo the fingerprinting process at Kennedy, officials said.
> More than 2,000 criminal and visa fraud cases have been detected by the screening process, introduced in response to security concerns following the attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. officials said.
Roughly they've scanned fingerprints for 36,792,000 visitors (who may be repeat visitors), and caught more than 2,000 people. (Between 2001/9/11 and 2008/9/11.)
The reason they don't catch many people is because they're fingerprinting tourists and most likely first time visitors to the US. I'm surprised they caught anyone at all.
Yes I know, I've been fingerprinted a dozen or so times. I don't know statistics but I would guess the majority are first-time or just connecting which still classes as entering the US.
>That's just FUD. And saying baseless things like "that's never how it works", that's just fearmongering, not contributing to the conversation. It doesn't even make sense.
It makes perfect sense -- you just need to follow the historical precedents, instead of looking for some inevitable logical reason why that would happen.
Technologies introduced with the potential to control and restrict people (or users) have always expanded their scope and reach.
CCTV was something banks used. Now it's all around modern cities. GPS tracking was once something exotic. Then millions could be tracked through their mobile phone. Then you even get people voluntarily participating in "location aware" services, transmitting their location 24/7. Walled garden software was few and far between all through 1980-2010. Now it's the sole standard on iOS, de facto on Android, and has crept in desktop OS too. There are tons of similar examples.
>There are millions (hundreds of thousands? you get my point) of fingerprint readers out there.
There were also "tens of thousands" of tablets before the iPad. Still noone cared about them. Mass sales are an enabler. It's another thing for "hundrends of thousands" (far fewer, I'd say) fingerprint readers to be out there in places and devices noone sees excepts when he travels or if he works in some special places that use them for security, and another thing to have fingerprint readers on 1 out of 3 or 4 americans (the iPhone market share IIRC).
>Suddenly Apple builds one in, an additional feature, and people start inventing conspiracy theories.
I don't care much about conspiracy theories (and I dislike the use of the term to ridicule legitimate concerns, as if we were talking about fake moon landings or UFOs). This comment thread was about some not far-fetched potential implications.
>Yes, that's why you can't get on the internet except through AOL any more.
I don't see any justification for your sarcasm.
It might not be called AOL today, but between FB and Google you have a even more widespread and far reaching modern equivalent. Add Youtube, Android, Google Fiber and Glass to the mix and the control and information gathered is even more than what was there to AOL's wildest dreams.
And between Google Search and Gmail, it's even less easy to switch to than from AOL. AOL was all disanvatages, whereas Google Search is best of class, as is Gmail. People are even afraid to leave FB (you see it all the time, even on HN threads) because of peer pressure and the effect on their social life. Leaving AOL never had that.
>What nonsense.
iTunes Store, Mac App Store, Windows Phone Store, Google Play Store, console software, etc etc. So called "post-PC" devices like the iPad have adopted the walled garden approach, that's not something to be argued, it's a fact.
Do you have any counter-examples, or just wanted to insult my response with the content-less reply of "nonsense"?
You're really equating apples with oranges with 'it might not be called AOL today...' All of your arguments are conclusory instead of evidence based, eg 'people are afraid to leave FB' - really? Afraid? Bullshit. Facebook has utility for them; if something of similar convenience and greater utility comes along, they'll use it.
iTunes Store, Mac App Store, Windows Phone Store, Google Play Store, console software, etc etc. So called "post-PC" devices like the iPad have adopted the walled garden approach, that's not something to be argued, it's a fact.
Do you have any counter-examples, or just wanted to insult my response with the content-less reply of "nonsense"?
Yeas, but your claim was that this is a new thing. Go back and look at home computers in the 1980s or networking hardware in the 90s. Walled gardens have been around for ages: it was the basis of the AT&T monopoly that existed until the 70s (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walled_garden_(technology)) and used to be the norm in the motion picture industry at one time before antitrust actions forced the studios to divest their theater holdings.
Really, it's up to you to back up your own claims, not up to me to falsify them. You have a bad habit of drawing your conclusion first and then looking for evidence to support it. I personally find it helpful to begin by assuming I'm wrong and trying to falsify my hypothesis.
>And what better way to prove it than to cherry-pick examples.
Examples are always cherry picked. The other option is called "exhaustive enumeration", and I don't think it's possible.
Let's just say that 50 years ago,
1) nobody could track your exact position 24/7,
2) there was not fingerprint matching,
3) you could still dissapear in a remote place with much fewer chances of people finding you
4) your friends didn't post pictures of you for all the world to see
5) people were not required to carry some sort of ID cards
6) your purchases could not be tracked in real time (cach or cachiers check's, no credit cards)
7) all your (snail then) correspondence was not automatically and efficiently read
8) CCTV wasn't prevalent
9) radio couln't track what you were listening to (as Pandora etc)
10) nobody kept track of what movies you watched (like Netflix, Youtube, etc)
11) They could track cars by reading their plates of some camera.
etc etc. And tons of other stuff besides.
It's nice living in a dream bubble, but all these do exist, and are a real tendency in a higher technological society. After all bureacracy and control with expand given the chance (and with the lack of any counter tendency), and technology is a huge enabler for it to expand.
Good grief. Then unplug your damned devices and go live in a cabin somewhere. Many of us speak as if our lives were so profound that governments everywhere are just dying to violate us. Even with everyone's data shared everywhere it becomes meaningless after awhile due to the sheer volume.
Respectfully, I think you're missing the point. It's not about any one person being interesting enough. The fifth amendment gives the (American) people a right not to incriminate themselves. The point is that a sizable chunk of the population can now unlock a lot of information about themselves without the fifth being an issue. I don't think the writer of the article claims that this is an effect that was actively saught after by Apple or the govt - it's simply here and people need to know and think.
It's as if someone invented a key you could turn to remember whatever you forgot. Great invention, but the article is saying: be aware, turning the key is not self-incrimination, and so now you have no 5th amendment.
>Good grief. Then unplug your damned devices and go live in a cabin somewhere. Many of us speak as if our lives were so profound that governments everywhere are just dying to violate us.
It's not about boring people living boring lives. They can go on doing whatever and not care. This is about people whose rights get violated, people that do things, from investigative journalism, to politics, to corporate whistleblowers, etc.
And it's not just about some boring, cozy little suburbian part of the world (as if Nowheresville, Iowa and Sunville, California is all there exists), it's also about people living in oppressive regimes, fucked up governments etc.
Those people push society forward. If it were only for people whose "lives are not profound", then we would still have slavery, no women's vote, no gay rights, and 15 hour workdays (including for children).
I'm from India. And we are 450 million people into (by next year that will be 600 million, and a few years later, 1.2 billion) a mammoth ID project that makes it mandatory to submit your biometric data (all fingers plus iris) to get the 'Aadhar' card. Of course, technically the card itself isn't mandatory, but because it's linked with various govt services ranging from subsidies (educational scholarships, cooking gas), pensions, property sales/rentals and even marriage registrations, it is as good as mandatory for most people. Various countries and multilateral aid agencies/donors are studying the Indian model to see if it can be replicated in other countries.
I agree it is not directly connected to Apple, or the US, but there is a progressive and gradual creep into the acceptance and use of biometric data.
Save your vitriol for when it finally happens then (my guess: highly unlikely).
There is no slippery slope here. You think Android manufacturers blindly follow where Apple leads? At the very worst Apple will sign iOS's death warrant at that point.
Well, check up in this thread for a list of a lot of examples.
I don't believe people, and much more, hackers, would deny that PC and technology gets more restrictive, and companies like to push that as much as they can.
Here's a few examples:
1) You could change the memory of a Mac laptop (but not with current versions where it's purposefully glud to the board).
2) You could expand a Mac Pro, change GPU, even CPU, etc (but not with the new version).
3) You could change the battery of older iPods, not with newer models, iPhones or iPads.
In general, todays more prevalent forms, from laptops to tablets are not user servicable like desktops (and even laptops) used to be.
4) You used to run anything on OS X without any restrictions. Now OS X added code signing and a mode that only let's you run signed-apps (and another mode that only let's you run only App Store apps).
5) Older (windows) tablets run everything. Then the iPad come that only runs iTunes Store iOS apps (without a jailbreak). Every company started adding stores (Play store, Windows store) to their offerings.
6) You could change GUI themes in Mac OS (Kaleidoscope, etc). Not with OS X.
7) Windows just needed a serial code from the box you bought. Then internet activation became mandatory. In general, software using the internet for purchase validation was few and optional. Now most software has some form of mandatory "activation" step.
8) You could buy Creative Suite in a box and use it forever. Now subscription is mandatory.
You can find tons more examples. Either stuff gets incrementally locked down or something cames along and replaces the previous form with a more restricted newer one.
You might want to reduce your sarcasm and read on this:
I've commented on how it's less safe - blah blah blah. But I think you're right. This is no bigger deal than the face unlock option in Android, which is coincidentally also very insecure. The difference is, in the case of Android, nobody inflated the security implications, it was simply a neat trick to open your phone, that smart people won't use.
I think the problem might be that you are secretly 'forced' to use it. What if NSA / govt tells apple to start harvesting all fingerprints of all users
> Why on earth are people getting worked up about this?
It's an Apple release. The tech press is _required_ to act like any Apple release contains at least one thing that is the second coming of Mecha-Hitler; it's the law.
The fingerprint ID is just another option, which you don't have to use.
So titles like this are just incorrect. Fingerprint ID isn't taking away any of your rights, because you can still use the PIN just like you always have.
I mean seriously, what the heck is going on here? Why on earth are people getting worked up about this? Sure, the fingerprint ID might be less secure, and it's important to realize that, but nobody's forcing you to use it. According to everything reported so far, the new iPhone is not removing your PIN.