Qualcomm’s new always-on smartphone camera is a privacy nightmare

theverge.com

7 points·jbredeche··3 comments

This may be based on this technology from Qualcomm [1, 2]. The first article talks about privacy too.

A similar thing is mentioned in [3]: "In response to a question about the ethics of an always-on camera, Asghar noted that Qualcomm attempts to “make sure that the data that is there stays on the device.” Any images captured by the camera will be kept on the device itself. “As you know, these are capabilities that add to experiences…and [we want] to make sure that we have solutions that are abiding by all the privacy parameters and everything,” Asghar added."

[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/03/29/243161/qualcomm-...

[2] https://rebootingcomputing.ieee.org/images/files/pdf/iccv-20...

[3] https://www.pcworld.com/article/556345/qualcomms-next-snapdr...

Would really love to hear the Qualcomm lead PM on the real world use cases where this would be valuable. As for now, it's an extra reason to stay away from Qualcomm-powered devices.

Qualcomm says that this “feature” is useful to lock your phone after few seconds when you leave it somewhere (i.e. desk) or if someone -not you- is looking at the screen, it can obscures it immediately.

Maybe Qualcomm is right and this is helpful and they will never spy you, but this feature add a future attack point, for criminals and governments who whant to track you and you can’t noticed it because it use almost no power. I hope they’re implementing very very well the security and the circuits to led the user know when the camera is looking at you actively.

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