Biometrics Pioneer Gives Thumbs Up to iPhone Fingerprint Scanner | Cult of Mac
Summary
Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint scanner has been welcomed as a “major step forward” by Biometrics expert Philip Smith, whose company pioneered the technology a decade ago. But Touch ID has already set off a firestorm of controversy among privacy advocates who say there could be lots of Big Brother implications, especially following revelations by Der Spiegel Online that the N.S.A. One of the major missing pieces is whether the iPhone contains a Near Field Communications (NFC) chip, which would make it compatible with current point-of-sale terminals and electronic badge readers. “The ultimate vision we had even back then was that the fingerprint would become the replacement for passwords in authenticating the user for a myriad of situations beyond access to the immediate device,” he said. “Ironically, 10 years ago Apple constantly resisted the idea of fingerprint sensors in their MacBooks for various reasons, including the fact that they did not fit into their design ethic,” he said.