Senator concerned about Apple's fingerprint tech

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

By BREE FOWLER

NEW YORK (AP) - Sen. Al Franken is asking Apple for more clarity on privacy and security concerns he has with its use of fingerprint recognition technology in the new iPhone 5S.

The iPhone 5S, which went on sale Friday, includes a fingerprint sensor that lets users tap the phone's home button to unlock their phone, rather than enter a four-digit passcode.

But Franken said that the fingerprint system could be potentially disastrous for users if someone does eventually hack it. While a password can be kept a secret and changed if it's hacked, he said, fingerprints are permanent and are left on everything a person touches, making them far from a secret.

"Let me put it this way: if hackers get a hold of your thumbprint, they could use it to identify and impersonate you for the rest of your life," the Minnesota Democrat said in a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20130920/DA8UC13O3.html

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A woman woman stands in line, outside the Apple Store on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, Fla., Friday, Sept. 20, 2013. Friday is the first time Apple is releasing two different iPhone models at once. (AP Photo/J Pat Carter)

[frazzled]

1. How does someone steal (and keep and re-use) your fingerprint?

I'm tired and I can't figure it out.

[Tx4obama]

2. Maybe they could use one of those new fangled printers and print the fingerprint out with oil onto

... a special plastic sheet and then transfer it to objects - in order to make you look like you committed a crime

[Paulie]

3. Easier to just follow you to a restaurant

and steal the water glass. Then leave the glass at a scene.

[Tx4obama]

5. But you couldn't take the print off the water glass and put it on a gun or knife or...

... a broken window, etc.

Investigators/DAs would need more than a print on a water glass to get a conviction on someone I think.

[Tigress DEM]

6. digitally

[onehandle]

7. They can't. The sensor is biometric. It requires the live, original finger. nt

[Skittles]

4. I wish they'd study the kind of people who stand in line for that shit

[ForgoTheConsequence]

12. We had quite a line at the food bank Thursday.

Wish some of those Apple Iphone losers would have stopped by and helped out. Too bad there isn't "an app for that".

[hibbing]

16. I wonder about that too

I really don't get the standing in line to buy an overpriced phone. But whatever trips their trigger.
Peace

[Skittles]

17. I confronted a coworker when I discovered he was one of them

I raked him over the coals - he spluttered all kinds of silly defenses but failed to say the real reason - pure, sickening materialism and greed

[underpants]

8. "Senator"??? McCain, Boehner, and Graham get their names in the headlines

In fact they only identify Franken as a Democrat once in the story.


Whaaaaaaaaaat Democrats don't like the spying on us???? Why the pretty lady on Fox News never told me THAT!!!!

[TheDeputy]

9. Senator wants publicity. Complains about iPhone.

Great way to get free publicity, manufacture a story. God Bless Senator Franken, but, come on.

[AdHocSolver]

11. Apple wants to sell "new" technology to increase profits.

It makes more sense to question Apple's claims than to belittle Senator Franken's entirely legitimate concerns.

After all, if engineers can design a 3-D printer that can "print" a plastic gun, among other surprising items, then why couldn't engineers develop a device that can "print" someone's finger prints to fool any fingerprint recognition device?

I am always amazed at the people who evidently know little about a technology belittle anyone who questions the direction of technological development.

Did you also belittle the people who raised questions about nuclear power generation before Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima?

[TheDeputy]

14. Can't print a gun.

Can print some parts, though. I also think the Senator was smart for jumping on the free publicity. It was wise.

[AdHocSolver]

15. There was a video showing a guy printing gun parts, assembling them, and firing a bullet.

It isn't practical...yet. It was a demonstration showing the capabilities of the technology.

Having worked for several years in computer programming and electronics, I am well aware of what the technology is capable of achieving.

About 30 years ago, I programmed on a mainframe computer the size of a large refrigerator that had 4 megabytes of RAM, two hard disk drives each the size of a small freezer (with combined storage of a few hundred megabytes), backup tape drives, and the system cost about one million dollars. The monitors used CRT's that were about 20 inches cubed and weighed about 40 pounds each.

If thirty years ago, someone had said that in 2013, a person could buy a laptop computer with a multicore processor using 4 gigabytes of RAM, a terabyte of hard disc space, a 15-inch hi-res color monitor, fit into a case less than 3 inches thick, and run on batteries, that person would have been ridiculed just as you ridicule Al Franken.

If that person then said that you could use that 2013 computer to send and receive text, images, and sound practically anywhere on the planet in a matter of seconds, and it could be purchased for about a thousand dollars, that person would have been sent for psychiatric evaluation.

Al Franken's concerns are perfectly valid.

[pffshht]

10. Maybe it's worrying people at the NSA

They haven't figured out how to put a backdoor into a fingerprint scanner.

This concerns me a lot less than the trend of making car doors and house deadbolts unlock remotely with a code from a smartphone app. It's only a matter of time before some hacker makes an app that will unlock any such device, if they haven't already.

[quadrature]

13. fake fingerprints are common in the criminal-justice industry

wonderful, more incentive to steal somebodies
biometric info