App developer access to iPhone X face data spooks some privacy experts
App developer access to iPhone X face data spooks some
privacy experts
By Stephen Nellis • November 1, 2017
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc won accolades from
privacy experts in September for assuring that facial data used to unlock its
new iPhone X would be securely stored on the phone itself.
But Apple's privacy promises do not extend to the
thousands of app developers who will gain access to facial data in order to
build entertainment features for iPhone X customers, such as pinning a
three-dimensional mask to their face for a selfie or letting a video game
character mirror the player's real-world facial expressions.
Apple allows developers to take certain facial data off
the phone as long as they agree to seek customer permission and not sell the
data to third parties, among other terms in a contract seen by Reuters.
App makers who want to use the new camera on the iPhone X
can capture a rough map of a user's face and a stream of more than 50 kinds of
facial expressions. This data, which can be removed from the phone and stored
on a developer's own servers, can help monitor how often users blink, smile or
even raise an eyebrow.
That remote storage raises questions about how
effectively Apple can enforce its privacy rules, according to privacy groups
such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Democracy and
Technology. Apple maintains that its enforcement tools - which include
pre-publication reviews, audits of apps and the threat of kicking developers
off its lucrative App Store - are effective.
The data available to developers cannot unlock a phone;
that process relies on a mathematical representation of the face rather than a
visual map of it, according to documentation about the face unlock system that
Apple released to security researchers.
But the relative ease with which developers can whisk
away face data to remote servers leaves Apple sending conflicting messages:
Face data is highly private when used for authentication, but it is sharable -
with the user's permission - when used to build app features.
"The privacy issues around of the use of very
sophisticated facial recognition technology for unlocking the phone have been
overblown," said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American
Civil Liberties Union. "The real privacy issues have to do with the access
by third-party developers."
The use of face recognition is becoming ubiquitous on
everything from social networks to city streets with surveillance cameras.
Berlin law enforcement officials in August installed a facial recognition
system at the city’s main railway station to test new technology for catching
criminals and terrorists.
But privacy concerns loom large. In Illinois, Facebook
Inc faces a lawsuit over whether its photo tagging suggestions violated a state
law that bars the collection of biometric data without permission. Facebook
says it has always been clear with users that it can be turned off and the data
for it deleted.
Privacy experts say their concerns about iPhone X are not
about government snooping, since huge troves of facial photographs already
exist on social media and even in state motor vehicle departments. The issue is
more about unscrupulous marketers eager to track users' facial expressions in
response to advertisements or content, despite Apple's contractual rules
against doing so.
App makers must "obtain clear and conspicuous
consent" from users before collecting or storing face data, and can only
do so for a legitimate feature of an app, according to the relevant portions of
Apple's developer agreement that Apple provided to Reuters.
Apple's iOS operating system also asks users to grant
permission for an app to access to any of the phone's cameras.
Apple forbids developers from using the face data for
advertising or marketing, and from selling it to data brokers or analytics
firms that might use it for those purposes. The company also bans the creation
of user profiles that could be used to identify anonymous users, according to
its developer agreement.
"The bottom line is, Apple is trying to make this a
user experience addition to the iPhone X, and not an advertising
addition," said Clare Garvie, an associate with the Center on Privacy
& Technology at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington.
ENFORCEMENT IN QUESTION
Though they praised Apple's policies on face data,
privacy experts worry about the potential inability to control what app
developers do with face data once it leaves the iPhone X, and whether the tech
company's disclosure policies adequately alert customers.
The company has had high-profile mishaps enforcing its
own rules in the past, such as the 2012 controversy around Path, a social
networking app that was found to be saving users' contact lists to its servers,
a violation of Apple's rules.
One app developer told Reuters that Apple's
non-negotiable developer agreement is long and complex and rarely read in
detail, just as most consumers do not know the details of what they agree to when
they allow access to personal data.
Apple's main enforcement mechanism is the threat to kick
apps out of the App Store, though the company in 2011 told the U.S. Congress
that it had never punished an app in that way for sharing user information with
third parties without permission.
Apple's other line of defense against privacy abuse is
the review that all apps undergo before they hit the App Store. But the company
does not review the source code of all apps, instead relying on random spot
checks or complaints, according to 2011 Congressional testimony from Bud
Tribble, one of the company's "privacy czars."
With the iPhone X, the primary danger is that advertisers
will find it irresistible to gauge how consumers react to products or to build
tracking profiles of them, even though Apple explicitly bans such activity.
"Apple does have a pretty good historical track record of holding
developers accountable who violate their agreements, but they have to catch
them first - and sometimes that's the hard part," the ACLU's Stanley said.
"It means household names probably won't exploit this, but there's still a
lot of room for bottom feeders."
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis; Editing by Jonathan Weber
and Edward Tobin)
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