“Your phone’s front camera is always securely looking for your face, even if you don’t touch it or raise to wake it.” That’s how Qualcomm Technologies vice president of product management Judd Heape introduced the company’s new always-on camera capabilities in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor set to arrive in top-shelf Android phones early next year.
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But for those of us with any sense of how modern technology is used to violate our privacy, a camera on our phone that’s always capturing images even when we’re not using it sounds like the stuff of nightmares and has a cost to our privacy that far outweighs any potential convenience benefits.
Qualcomm’s main pitch for this feature is for unlocking your phone any time you glance at it, even if it’s just sitting on a table or propped up on a stand. You don’t need to pick it up or tap the screen or say a voice command — it just unlocks when it sees your face. I can see this being useful if your hands are messy or otherwise occupied (in its presentation, Qualcomm used the example of using it while cooking a recipe to check the next steps). Maybe you’ve got your phone mounted in your car, and you can just glance over at it to see driving directions without having to take your hands off the steering wheel or leave the screen on the entire time.
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Qualcomm is framing the always-on camera as similar to the always-on microphones that have been in our phones for years. Those are used to listen for voice commands like “Hey Siri” or “Hey Google” (or lol, “Hi Bixby”) and then wake up the phone and provide a response, all without you having to touch or pick up the phone. But the difference is that they are listening for specific wake words and are often limited with what they can do until you do actually pick up your phone and unlock it.
It feels a bit different when it’s a camera that’s always scanning for a likeness.
It’s true that smart home products already have features like this. Google’s Nest Hub Max uses its camera to recognize your face when you walk up to it and greet you with personal information like your calendar. Home security cameras and video doorbells are constantly on, looking for activity or even specific faces. But those devices are in your home, not always carried with you everywhere you go, and generally don’t have your most private information stored on them, like your phone does. They also frequently have features like physical shutters to block the camera or intelligent modes to disable recording when you’re home and only resume it when you aren’t. It’s hard to imagine any phone manufacturer putting a physical shutter on the front of their slim and sleek flagship smartphone.
Lastly, there have been many reports of security breaches and social engineering hacks to enable smart home cameras when they aren’t supposed to be on and then send that feed to remote servers, all without the knowledge of the homeowner. Modern smartphone operating systems now do a good job of telling you when an app is accessing your camera or microphone while you’re using the device, but it’s not clear how they’d be able to inform you of a rogue app tapping into the always-on camera.
To be honest, these things are also pretty damn scary! I understand that Americans have been habituated to ubiquitous surveillance, but here in the EU we still value our privacy and don’t like it much at all.
Ultimately, it comes down to a level of trust — do you trust that Qualcomm has set up the system in a way that prevents the always-on camera from being used for other purposes than intended? Do you trust that the OEM using Qualcomm’s chips won’t do things to interfere with the system, either for their own profit or to satisfy the demands of a government entity?
Even if you do have that trust, there’s a certain level of comfort with an always-on camera on your most personal device that goes beyond where we are currently.
Maybe we’ll just start having to put tape on our smartphone cameras like we already do with laptop webcams.
Source: Qualcomm’s new always-on smartphone camera is a potential privacy nightmare – The Verge
Robin Edgar
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