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Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

They did say you have to look directly at the phone. If looking away is enough to prevent it from unlocking, that doesn't seem too bad.

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Effectively you'll need to have your head on the table if you're ever detained, or be closing your eyes shut and not able to walk, or waving your head around. Any of those could be seen as not complying with police.

Just as not providing your thumb would.

> They did say you have to look directly at the phone.

But it will work with sunglasses too? I find it hard to believe. Just slap some sunglasses on the perp and unlock his phone. easy peezy.

It learns your face and can work around haircuts, sunglasses etc.

If this is true, then require looking directly into the camera is useless. Border agent could simply put a pair of sunglasses on you and unlock your phone easily.

How does it work around sunglasses if Apple also said you have to have your eyes open?

Just a guess: it uses infrared to somehow determine where you are looking, and sunglasses don't block infrared.

Well but that's the exact point - if it can work with sunglasses on,then it means you can force it to ignore whether someone is looking at it or not. Put sunglasses on someone unwilling to look at the phone - bam,done, phone unlocks without a problem.

In addition, you also have to have your eyes open for the phone to unlock.

So it will not work with sunglasses? FAIL if true.

They said it works if you are wearing glasses, so it will probably also work with sunglasses

Glasses are much more see-thru than sunglasses and therefore it may work with glasses but not sunglasses

This doesn't use visible light - it's IR.

A lot of IR is blocked by sunglasses. I know my IR iris scanner on my S8+ rarely works through sunglasses.

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