Can Cops Force You to Unlock Your Phone With Your Face?

The Atlantic

Customers who shell out $999 for an iPhone X when it comes out in November will have a new party trick in their pockets: They’ll be able to unlock the phone with nothing more than a quick glance at the screen. When they look away, it will lock up again.

When new features like this one, which Apple is calling Face ID, make it easier to unlock a phone, they save time; Apple says iPhone users unlock their phones an average of 80 times a day. But make it too easy to get into a phone and people start to get nervous.

Apple executives emphasized the security of Face ID as they announced the latest generation of iPhones on Tuesday. Once a phone learns to recognize its owner, using a 3-D map made up of more than 30,000 infrared dots projected onto a person’s face, it’ll only unlock itself when it senses that the owner is looking straight at the device. The map can’t be fooled by photos or masks, said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president for marketing, at Tuesday’s event, and it’s stored locally in a secure part of the device. Locking the phone just requires closing your eyes or glancing away, so waving a phone in front of its sleeping owner won’t unlock it. [MORE]