Report Explains Face ID Worked Fine at Live Event; U.S. Senator Raises Privacy and Security Concerns on New Feature
Several days following the iPhone X reveal, a possible explanation on what happened at the Face ID live presentation emerged that suggested that the device did not malfunction on stage. Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Al Franken has raised some concerns on the new iPhone X feature with relation to its future users' privacy and security.
A lot of Apple fans around the world certainly tuned in for the live stream of the Sept. 12 unveiling event at Cupertino where the iPhone X was announced as well as its sole security feature, the Face ID.
However, the much-awaited event turned somewhat awkward when the Face ID – right when it was being demonstrated to the whole world for the very first time – did not work as smoothly as Apple had planned.
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Apple's senior VP for Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, was tasked to demo the Face ID on stage. In his first attempt, the iPhone X he was using at the time did not unlock. After hitting the Sleep button and trying for the second time, the issue persisted and the audience saw the smartphone flash a message that said: "Your passcode is required to enable Face ID."
After reaching for a backup iPhone X unit, Federighi was able to unlock the device with the Face ID.
People were quick to assume that the Face ID feature had malfunctioned and thus raised questions on its accuracy. But recently, Yahoo provided a possible explanation of what happened on Sept. 12.
According to the report, it was highly possible that a staff backstage had restarted the first device used by Federighi on stage. iPhone users will be familiar with this situation because even with Touch ID, users are requested to enter their passcode first after a phone reboot before they are able to use this special function. That certainly sounds feasible.
Meanwhile, shortly after the debut of Face ID, Sen. Franken immediately wrote a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook where he raised several inquiries about the Face ID's effect on the users' privacy and security.
In the letter dated Sept. 13, Franken's office forwarded 10 main questions to Cook's office which all focused on Face ID and how it works. The public official requested to receive a reply within a month.
At the first question, Franken asked Apple if it was possible "for either Apple or a third party to extract and obtain usable faceprint data from the iPhone X" following the company's claims that data for Face ID would be stored in the device and would not be sent to a remote cloud storage service provider.
Franken also raised concerns if Face ID was "trained on a diverse set of faces, in terms of race, gender, and age" and raised an inquiry on how Apple could ensure that Face ID will perform with no bias based on race, gender and age.
The iPhone X can be pre-ordered starting Oct. 27 while its retail release is set on Friday, Nov. 3.
