- From: David Singer <singer@apple.com>
- Date: Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:58:31 -0800
- To: "Lukasz Olejnik (W3C)" <lukasz.w3c@gmail.com>
- Cc: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <joe@cdt.org>, Chaals McCathie Nevile <chaals@yandex-team.ru>, Frederick Hirsch <w3c@fjhirsch.com>, W3C Device APIs WG <public-device-apis@w3.org>, "public-privacy (W3C mailing list)" <public-privacy@w3.org>
> On Feb 29, 2016, at 13:53 , Lukasz Olejnik (W3C) <lukasz.w3c@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > 2016-02-29 22:47 GMT+01:00 Joseph Lorenzo Hall <joe@cdt.org>: > On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 2:37 PM, David Singer <singer@apple.com> wrote: > >> > >> > >> So, is this API a fingerprint risk, or a beacon risk? > >> > >> It provides information > > > > that’s my puzzle. it provides almost no information at all. what information does it provide? > > > > it can transmit information (e.g. the vibrate pattern), it can identify a device ‘in a crowd’, and so on, but… > > I think this is semantic confusion. Lukasz here seems to be saying > through the API a developer provides vibration patterns to the device > which vibrates according to those patterns. So these are beacon > facilitating risks (a cookie value could be marshaled into a set of > vibration patterns and then picked up acoustically by another device > to register the first device was in acoustic proximity) > > Actually, what I mean israther - probing accelerometer/gyroscope/etc sensors, which are known to differ from each others. This is basically an extraction of an identifier. Quintessential fingerprinting. "reading the output of accelerometer - can allow fingerprinting by imperfections in the accelerometer sensors.” That’s fingerprinting the accelerometers. I suppose it’s theoretically possible that the vibration actuators — or the combination of a specific actuator and a specific accelerometer set — can be unique, i.e. yield a fingerprint, but I am a little doubtful. I just want to be careful we don’t cause confusion by labelling what is essentially an output-only API as something that can yield information… > > > -- > Joseph Lorenzo Hall > Chief Technologist, Center for Democracy & Technology [https://www.cdt.org] > e: joe@cdt.org, p: 202.407.8825, pgp: https://josephhall.org/gpg-key > Fingerprint: 3CA2 8D7B 9F6D DBD3 4B10 1607 5F86 6987 40A9 A871 > > CDT's annual dinner, Tech Prom, is April 6, 2016! https://cdt.org/annual-dinner David Singer Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.
Received on Monday, 29 February 2016 21:59:24 UTC