TQP 020: The Cloud and Our Future Part II

Very soon, 100% of our digital lives will be stored and monitored inside the cloud. Anyone that has an iPhone is probably using or very tentatively using the fingerprint ID feature on the phone. Fingerprint ID technology is perhaps the most familiar biometric utility that we encounter. Apple has promised that your fingerprint information is encrypted, and will never be uploaded to their Cloud. But aren’t you already inside their house when you activate the phone? And even the most benevolent and courteous landlords still have the only master key to the whole house, don’t they? You may also know that biometric identification is currently being applied to a much wider list of body parts and activities. Facial recognition – Facebook has a facial recognition algorithm, and there’s lots of facial recognition in law enforcement. Retinal and iris scans. DNA verification. Voice recognition. Walking characteristics and gate analysis. Keyboard typing rhythm and mouse clicks. All these biometric measures, including fingerprint ID, are currently in use, and are being actively catalogued in databases everywhere – from the FBI to Facebook. There is a developing tech science called multimodal biometrics that seeks to correlate individual biometric characteristics like fingerprint, iris scans, and voice recognition into a much more complete virtual profile of a subject. This virtual profiling, using our biometric data, will become more possible as this information is steadily gathered, uploaded, and stored in The Cloud. Utilization of this data will depend on how users like the FBI and Facebook choose to apply it, but it’s The Cloud that makes it possible. Thank you for listening! What questions will you be taking with you after listening to this episode? We encourage you to connect with us via social media: Facebook Twitter