Qualcomm's new smartphone camera still on would be a potential privacy nightmare The company tries to reassure the public

"Your phone's front camera always searches for your face safely, even if you don't touch it or pick it up to wake it from sleep." So, during Snapdragon Tech Summit 2021, Judd Heape, vice president of product management at Qualcomm Technologies, showcased the company's new always-on camera capabilities in the Snapdragon 8 Gen processor. 1 which is expected to arrive in high-end Android phones early next year. Depending on your profile, this statement can be either exciting or concerning. For Qualcomm, this new feature will enable new use cases, like being able to wake up from sleep and unlock your phone without having to pick it up, or lock it instantly when it no longer sees your face. of how modern technology is used to violate our privacy, a camera on our phone that still captures images even when we are not using it is rather causing concern because it has a cost to our privacy that far outweighs the potential convenience benefits. Qualcomm's main pitch for this feature is to unlock your phone every time you look at it, even if it's just laying on a table or leaning on a stand. You don't have to pick it up or tap the screen or say a voice command: it just unlocks when it sees your face. This can be useful for example if your hands are busy (in its presentation, Qualcomm presented a use case in the kitchen, featuring a mobile user who is cooking and wants to check the next steps for a new recipe ).The company also does this to make your phone more secure by automatically locking the phone when it can no longer see your face or if it detects someone looking over your shoulder and scanning your group chats. . It can also prevent private information or notifications from appearing if you are looking at the phone with someone else. Basically, if you don't look at it, your phone is locked; if he can see you, he will be unlocked. If it sees you and someone else, it can automatically lock the phone or hide private information or on-screen notifications. wonder if having an always-on camera is worth the privacy trade-off. Qualcomm touts the always-on camera as similar to the always-on microphones that have been in our phones for years. These are used to listen for voice commands like "Hey Siri" or "Hey Google" and then wake the phone from sleep and provide a response, all without you having to touch or pick up the phone. But the difference is that they listen for specific wake words and are often limited in what they can do until you actually pick up your phone and unlock it. It's a little different when it comes to of a camera that's still looking for a likeness. It's true that connected home products already have features like this. Google's Nest Hub Max uses its camera to recognize your face when you approach and greets you with personal information like your calendar. Home security cameras and video doorbells are constantly on, looking for specific activity or even faces. But these devices are in your home, aren't always taken with you everywhere you go, and don't usually contain your most private information like your phone does. They also frequently have features like physical shutters to block the camera or smart modes to turn off recording when you're home and only resume recording when you're not. It's hard to imagine a phone maker putting a physical shutter on the front of its slim and sleek flagship smartphone. Finally, there have been numerous reports of security breaches and social engineering hacks to activate the cameras. smart homes when they're not supposed to be on, then send that stream to remote servers, all without the owner's knowledge. 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 unclear how they could tell you about a rogue app that hijacks your "always on" camera.Qualcomm tries to reassure the publicIn its presentation, Heape said that "camera data permanent data never leaves the secure detection hub while it scans for faces”, implying that the data is not sent to the cloud and apps on the phone will not be able to access it. Heape further clarified the technical operation of the system. The always-on camera is part of a chain that includes a new low-power image signal processor (ISP) and a machine learning stage. All three stages - camera, ISP and machine learning - are "hardened", according to Heape, he says it is not possible to inject code into the chain. The always-on camera is limited to a VGA resolution (640 x 480 pixels), although it uses the phone's existing front-facing camera and the rest of the phone's systems - the main processor, cellular radios, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc. are disabled. Heape said this low-power ISP "cannot capture photos or videos" and "no images or videos are stored" in this process, it only scans to detect whether there is a face or not. If the machine learning algorithm determines that a face is detected, the phone's other systems are woken up to authenticate the user and unlock the phone or deny access. "It's impossible in the low-power state to get a picture of it," says Heape. The system has no way of letting you know that its always-on camera is working, like other facial recognition systems do . Heape said an OEM could choose to add an indicator such as an LED light if they wanted. Another Qualcomm Technologies vice president of product management, Ziad Asghar, said users will also be able to turn off the always-on camera feature or maybe even select which features they want to use and which they don't. "The consumer has the choice of being able to choose what's enabled and what's not," he said. It's also possible that smartphone makers using the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 won't even enable this functionality at the hardware level. Since Qualcomm does not actually manufacture the smartphones in which its chips are integrated (apart from one-off novelties which do not represent a significant percentage of smartphones in circulation), companies like Samsung, OnePlus and Xiaomi can customize the features activated on their phones and those that are not. Heape said an OEM can request a Snapdragon chip with the feature disabled at the hardware level. Some of these companies are already bypassing Qualcomm's image processing components in favor of their own solutions - it's not hard to see them ignoring criticism about privacy concerns and foregoing this feature as well.