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Comment by akira2501 | Hacker News Reader

There are plenty of ways for anyone to get a picture of my face. In particular, the State has a copy of my photograph, and almost certainly full motion video of me in the DMV getting said license.

I just don't like the fact that my face becomes a password. I'm usually not in a position to _obscure_ my face, so I have no chances to decide if my face should act as a password in any given moment or not.

So, if you hold the phone up to my face, and I look at it, it just unlocks. That's the opposite of "security."

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anyone in a position to do that is in position to torture you the old fashioned way.

https://xkcd.com/538/

I think xkcd has never been arrested by the police and had his belongings searched through illegally. There's more to be afraid of than state actors with the ability to kidnap and torture you without being held to account.

could be worth it

I don’t know if that is true, nabbing somebody’s phone at a protest and pointing it at them seems like the sort of thing a cop could get away with at a protest for example. It must be illegal, but in the hustle and bustle of the moment, might be hard to catch.

If you’re talking about someone holding an iPhone to someone’s face, there’s a setting called “attention aware” that verifies your eyes are open and looking at the phone.

Which is unfortunately causing people's alarms to not work and the current recommendation is to deactivate said feature.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0kl4glp547o (bbc news article about it)

Umm, no. That’s an article with random speculation from unnamed people on the internet.

Attention awareness does not stop alarms, and it requires your eyes to be open and looking at the phone.

> Attention awareness does not stop alarms, and it requires your eyes to be open and looking at the phone.

Attention awareness silences/drasticly reduces the volume of alarms, that's how it is designed.

If they have a bug in the attention awareness feature it stands to reason that it could not require your eyes to be open or looking at the device in question at the time.

If you’re in that kind of environment, press the lock button five times in a row (iPhone) to require a password to unlock on the next interaction.

Challenge: surreptitiously press your lock button five times while being accosted or outright assaulted by one or more police officers.

Or, you know, just do it beforehand?

It's not illegal[1] and is the number one reason I don't use biometrics to unlock my phone.

[1] https://www.phonearena.com/news/court-ruling-cops-can-force-...

Early in the iOS Face ID cycle I saw this play out with a parent and child where the parent would make a funny face each time the child held the phone up to the parent's face, defeating the biometric.

Really well said but I'm afraid of it actually

So what? Everyone who posts this xkcd meme is just vouching for the belief that torture works, when available evidence says otherwise; it's not effective on seriously committed people.

https://clcjbooks.rutgers.edu/books/why-torture-doesnt-work-...

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