When facial detection goes racial Facial detection seems to be an integral part of phone security and privacy protection, but is it really safe? Story by Aditya Goel, Andrew Kogan
Photos by Apple, Matilda
Wormwood, DGT Portraits, Ekaterina Bolovtsova hat if someone else could unlock your phone just by looking at it? They would be able to access all of your data and records. They would be able to go through your search history and see your entire photo album. They would be able to make financial transactions from your phone. In general, the data stored on our phones is pretty secure. However, with the relatively new technology of facial recognition being incorporated in more and more phones, there is a chance that people with similar faces could unlock each other’s devices.
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Senior Rohit Vemuri recently
experienced how computers can mistake the faces of closely related siblings. Over the summer, he used his face to unlock his brother’s iPhone XR. Rohit’s brother is Niteesh Vemuri, a St. Mark’s alumnus who graduated in 2018, who is currently a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania. Rohit encountered no difficulty when he tried to open his brother’s phone. In fact, he was able to do it on his first try. “I just looked at it and it opened up,” Vemuri said. “It worked very smoothly and unlocked itself as if I were Niteesh. The first time this happened was in August of last summer, right after the Morocco photography trip. ” Apple still has not fixed the problem. When Niteesh stopped by his family’s home the weekend before Halloween, Rohit was easily able to unlock his brother’s phone. “It worked last week too when my brother came back to visit from college,” Vemuri said. “This time his phone was fully updated with the latest software update, iOS 13. I was still able to unlock it.” 12
However, Niteesh is unable to open Rohit’s phone. “I think it is very strange that I am able to unlock his phone, but he is not able to unlock my phone,” Vemuri said. “Our phones are both the same model, they are iPhone XR’s. My whole family thinks that this is very amusing.” The two brothers do not share that much of a resemblance to each other. There are many characteristics on the sibling’s faces that set their faces apart. “We are both Indians and that’s about it,”
Computer Science Instructor Kurt Tholking
Any facial recognition software has the ability to make mistakes or the potential to be ‘racist’.”
Vemuri said. “We don’t look that much alike. My brother’s nose is much bigger than mine and he has bigger eyes than me. I also have a mole under my chin. He has glasses and I don’t. His hair is more sparse than mine. My hair is thicker, almost like a forest.”
According to Apple, the facial
recognition technology on their phones works by scanning the shape of a person’s face with infrared light. The camera tracks thirty thousand dots on a person’s face and connects them to distinguish between faces. “If Apple tracked more points on a person’s face, I believe their face ID technology would be more accurate and make fewer mistakes,” Vemuri said. “But in order to do that, they
THE SCIENTIFIC MARKSMAN MAY 2020
Infrared Camera
Flood illuminator Proximity sensor Ambient light sensor Speaker
Microphone Front camera
Dot projector
