- By having a camera always on,
it can always be searching for your face.
That way when you're not in front
of your smartphone, it locks.
- Or I could just press a button,
and it locks.
welcome to All Things Secure, my name's Josh.
And we're all at this point kind of used
to having Siri, Alexa, Google Home
and all of these audio listening devices,
constantly listening for commands.
And in most cases, even recording whatever we have to say.
But now we're being introduced to,
what's known as an always-on camera.
Which you saw at the beginning here,
but I'm gonna share with you a few clips is
from a summit, a Tech Summit put on by Qualcomm,
which is a chip maker that makes a lot of the chips
that go into some of the cell phones
that we have.
And they've developed the technology
to enable always-on cameras
that will constantly be searching for our faces.
I mean, as it is right now, if I want to turn my phone on,
I have to either lift it up or I have to tap it,
and then it will start looking for my face ID
and unlock the phone based on that.
But Qualcomm is saying that they're creating a phone
or at least a phone chip that will be able
to always be searching for our face.
So what are the advantages of this?
- [Narrator] The always-on camera gives
one very basic advantage.
Your phone's front camera
is always securely looking for your face,
even if you don't touch it or raise to wake it.
- Okay. Yeah.
I guess I can see a little bit those advantages.
So now it's always gonna be searching for my face.
Whenever it sees me, it will unlock
any time that it's taken out of my presence
it will lock up immediately.
It's always just looking for my face.
I get that in a way.
I mean, we are always as humans drawn
to even greater convenience,
that's the reason why these always listening devices
have become so popular in all of our homes.
We love the convenience of having Alexa or Siri,
but an always-on camera just seems like
it takes it one step too far.
All right, so let's think about the risks
of having an always on computer.
Like what about privacy?
Well, I mean, at least according to Qualcomm, thankfully.
- And you don't have to worry about privacy.
The always-on camera data never leaves
the secure sensing hub while it's looking for faces.
- Okay, so it never leaves the chip.
This is very much similar to the biometric data
that we give to our cell phones right now.
So for example, Apple,
this phone has my fingerprint.
It has my face ID,
but at least according to Apple,
all of that information is stored on the phone itself.
It is never stored on Apple servers.
In the same way, Qualcomm saying that
none of this information,
none of the always-on camera information
will leave the chip itself.
The chip is merely acting as a searching device.
It's always looking for your face
so that it can activate the phone immediately
once you start looking at it
or immediately once it's in front of your face.
And again, we're talking about convenience,
but at the expense of your privacy.
So what does this mean now?
Well, right now there aren't any phones
that use this Snapdragon chips.
So this isn't something that
is currently present in our phones.
This is something that will happen maybe
in another year or two years.
What Qualcomm is saying is we have given you
the ability to do this.
And now it's up to the phone manufacturers
to actually implement this always-on design
and this always-on feature.
So will they do it?
Well, that's up to the different phone manufacturers,
but right now you need to start thinking about,
am I comfortable with this?
Am I comfortable with an always-on phone because
it's not gonna be too long before
you're presented with a phone
that has the always-on feature.
And just like a lot of these other features we have
that give you the ability to turn it off in the settings,
that doesn't always mean that it's turned off,
take this for example, if I turn off my phone,
it still has a GPS tracker that will track
where the phone is.
That's a security feature so that
if someone steals your phone and tries to turn it off,
it can still be tracked.
But you're talking about the fact that
I thought I turned my phone off
and it is still generating a GPS signal.
That's why a lot of the privacy phones
that are sold have a physical switch
that disconnects the camera,
or it disconnects the microphone
so that you know when you turn those off,
they cannot hear anything,
they can not record any video.
The same can't be said with these types of always-on chips
or always-on listening devices.
So you have to think about the fact that
there are phone manufacturers,
let's use China as an example, ZTE or Huawei
that are required by Chinese law
to give the Chinese government backdoor access.
Now, according to Qualcomm,
that shouldn't matter because all of that data
stays on the chip itself.
But how can I be sure of that?
I don't know that I can,
and I don't necessarily trust a Huawei or ZTE to ensure that
that kind of separation between the chip
and what is accessible through the back door
of their OS remains separated.
And I know I'm picking on China here,
but the same could be said for Google
and their pixel phones.
They have every reason to want to gather
as much information as they can on us as users
and same for Apple.
So it is a lot about who you trust,
but it's also about whether or not we accept what Qualcomm's
saying about our privacy and security.
in relation to this always on technology
that that's gonna be used in the proper way.
And I'm not convinced it is, but I'd love to hear from you.
What do you think?
Is this a technology that you would be comfortable with?
Actually, let me put it this way.
I want you to answer this question in the comments below.
Let's say that I approach you with a free phone,
absolutely free.
You don't have to pay a penny,
but it has the always-on feature.
Would you take it?
All right, let's say that it has the always-on feature,
but within the software,
it gives you the ability to turn that off.
Would you take it then?
That's what I want you to answer in the comments below
and start thinking right now
is the always-on camera features something
that you're comfortable with
and if not start preparing for the day
when that is a standard feature for the phones that we get,
whenever we upgrade to the next latest, greatest phone.