Since the Galaxy Note 7 brought a revolutionary iris scanner for privacy protection, Apple must have been furious that they have a new competitor in town. It seems Apple is trying to one up Samsung’s new security feature with something unprecedented. Apple filed a new patent application last Thursday with the US Patent & Trademark Office that raised some eyebrows.
The abstract for the new filed patent describes the concept as follows:
A computing device may determine to capture biometric information in response to the occurrence of one or more trigger conditions. The trigger condition may be receipt of one or more instructions from one or more other computing devices, detection of potential unauthorized use by the computing device, normal operation of the computing device, and so on. The computing device may obtain biometric information and may store such biometric information. Such biometric information may be one or more fingerprints, one or more images of a current user of the computing device, video of the current user, audio of the environment of the computing device, forensic interface use information, and so on. The computing device may then provide the stored biometric information for identification of one or more unauthorized users.
The future iPhone device will include the features that this patent clearly describes, a self protective mechanism that is meant to discourage thieves. When activated under a robbery incident, the phone will document the thief’s fingerprints via the Touch ID button, camera will capture the thief’s face, and the microphone will record his voice. That is quite a security powerhouse that will frighten the bravest of thieves. There were concerns whether these features would be legal but we have yet to see how it will all play out. Apple refused to comment on the entire issue.
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