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Comment by konschubert | Hacker News Reader

> Among the pieces of evidence that Google suggests the Trust API could use are some obvious biometric indicators, such as your face shape and voice pattern, as well as some less obvious ones: how you move, how you type and how you swipe on the screen. > With the service continually running in the background of the phone, it can keep track of whether those indicators match how it knows you use your phone.

This is different from a password in my eyes. A password only proves that I know a secret. It can prove that I am the same person who signed up for a service or at least that I was trusted with the password by the person who signed up.

This Trust API on the other hand proves that I am a specific individual.

A password is like a pseudonym. The Trust API requires me to reveal my full identity.

I think this is big step back in privacy.

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And in security.

You can change your password as often and as frequently as you like, and you don't wear it for everyone visible over your shoulders.

Not to mention, a password can stay the same, but if you break your arm or lose your nose, your biometrics or swipe behavior may no longer be the same.

And a password can change. If someone works out how to mimic my biometrics, what do I do?

Break your arm or lose your nose, obviously.

Break the other person's arm or nose?

Thinking the same thing regarding privacy.

I'm all for getting rid of passwords, but the idea of Google (and other service providers) keeping that much information on me would definitely push me to getting rid of smartphone. Yes, I know that Google, Facebook, etc. already know a lot about me. But I still have some control over it. And a lot of it are things that I can and do change over time (what they knew about me 5 years ago doesn't necessarily reflect who I am now).

Not to mention that if this catches on, ever more parties (that you authenticate with) will be collecting these biometrics, which means there would be an ever greater chance of that data getting used to impersonate you.

To avoid this they would have to keep it on the device, in a secure enclave, in "hashed" form rather than the raw biometric, and only transmit the fact of authentication to Google, much as how Apple deals with Touch ID on the iPhone.

We all know Eric Schmidt's view on privacy:

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."

"We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”

“Your digital identity will live forever… because there’s no delete button.”

> Not to mention that if this catches on, ever more parties (that you authenticate with) will be collecting these biometrics

... and then doing data science over them. It's like Phrenology all over again!

I'm all for not getting rid of passwords, because everything proposed to replace them so far has sounded a lot worse.

Yes, the equivalent to a password in the physical world is a key. Or something like the tagged jewellery they were suggesting before:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/512051/google-wants-to-re...

I agree this seems like massive overkill. Biometric data is what you'd associate with a passport, or id card, or perhaps require for access to a bank account. That kind of data being used to log-in to a website is a big step.

And how long until a TLA says ok Google/Apple for these phones give us all the biometric data on anyone who's used it.

For example a phone found at a terrorist safe house the FBI woud love to see who had been using that phone

Fully agree.

> I think this is big step back in privacy.

s/privacy/surveillance

Users like me neither store sensitive data nor conduct sensitive communications through email. I do not need infallible security; reasonably reliable service is enough.

You don't consider access to almost all of your accounts to be "sensitive"? Remember that the vast majority of services let you reset your password by sending a link to your email. So anyone with access to your inbox effectively also has access to any other account associated with that email address. I think it's a rare person who doesn't have a single digital account without anything sensitive in it.

>I think it's a rare person who doesn't have a single digital account without anything sensitive in it.

I'd wager they don't exist for anyone who uses the internet or social media on a daily basis. Most people don't realize how sensitive the information they post online actually is.

Many people don't consider the names of their family members to be "sensitive information" (hell, they happily tag them on Facebook!) There's a good portion of people who don't consider the town or state they live in and where they work to be sensitive information. There's a large portion of people who post unpopular opinions and don't treat their opinions as plausibly sensitive information.

None of this is sensitive information until they have an internet hate mob knocking at their employer's door trying to make them lose their job - or when their family members are harassed or get told things that said individual would have preferred to keep secret from them. Because in their heads they've convinced themselves they have never done or said anything wrong to anyone and what they said in the past will never come to bite them in the ass in the future because popular opinions will never change and they're always on the "right"/"winning" side.

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