Why I’m glad Apple maybe shelved AirPods with cameras inside
While I don’t believe Apple intended to abuse the technology, I’m glad it may have shelved plans for AirPods with cameras inside – and concerned in case it hasn’t.
That’s because ever since I first heard about this idea I’ve been concerned at how these tools could be abused by hackers, third party companies with access to the operating system, and governments that prioritize surveillance above privacy.
When data flows, where does it go?
The original intent seemed quite benign. Apple didn’t intend for these cameras to pick up images in a conventional sense, but merely to identify ambient surroundings – they might recognize you were indoors, outdoors, in a store, running across a field, or hanging out with friends, for example.
This ambient, contextual information would then feed Siri AI’s features on your paired iPhone, enabling you to get more refined responses and support from that.
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This information would be treated in typical Apple style, which means it would stay on your device and if shared online would be encrypted and anonymized. The idea being that Apple would figure out how to use AirPods camera data to help you without knowing who you are or storing identifiable data about you.
We want your information
The problem creeps in when you think about regulation, in that in some markets Apple may have been required to make the same data available to third-parties offering different degrees of privacy protection.
Apple could not legitimately promise good privacy if it was then forced to provide less private experiences. Europe’s insistence on this for iPhones is an obvious challenge waiting to happen for video on AirPods.
It’s not the only governance-related challenge these products may face. The UK recently forced Apple to stop offering Advanced Data Protection for iCloud, a tool which protects the majority of your iCloud data. That’s because the UK wants to turn your online iCloud data into some Big Brother Eye-Cloud information, easily accessible to security services.
The UK had wanted Apple to install encryption backdoors into its products to further erode privacy. Apple fought this attempt, but as those decisions were reached in secret courts, outside of the public eye, the company hasn’t been permitted to tell us if our data remains properly encrypted in the UK.
Now imagine what happens with any data gathered by camera-equipped AirPods – could that information remain private under the UK’s privacy-eroding diktat?
Where convenience becomes something else
Reassuringly, Apple does still say, “we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and we never will.” Apple also points to 15 iCloud data categories that remain encrypted.
The UK isn’t the only nation state that doesn’t seem to value privacy, and that reality may perhaps have driven the company to abandon plans to introduce EyePods, given the privacy erosion those things might have represented.
It’s possible they represent a point at which the benefits of technologies such as these may be outweighed by the risks of the regulatory environment, particularly in the absence of internationally accepted standards of privacy.
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