S-STEM Scholar Chris Gonzalez's Blog

Alrighty, week 5 now. Don't stress out! I submitted my research proposal last week - which also doubled as my blog post - but I'm beginning to have some second thoughts on it. Well, sort of. You see, originally I was planning on doing a small experiment to figure out what parts of the face and fingers Face ID and Touch ID look for, respectively. I had this chart set up: This is the process I was going to use to conduct some experiments. However, immediately after I submitted the proposal and got the blog post done, I realized something: the scanning experiment wouldn't contribute much, if anything, to the main theme of my research, which I also realized is mainly about privacy concerns in the cloud, as that's where the vast majority of our data is stored nowadays. Biometric verification, at least on Apple devices, is done entirely on-device and thus has nothing to do with the cloud at all. You don't need the internet for your phone to scan your face or one of your f...

My research subject is a bit of a work in progress still – it’s a little broad and may require further narrowing down – but now I have a main topic in what I’d like to do: I’d like to conduct research on Apple’s bio-authentication methods, specifically Face ID and Touch ID. Although I’m focusing on Apple’s technologies (mostly because it’s what I have access to and am familiar with), the fact that bio-authentication is present on essentially every single modern smartphone of any platform made in the past few years is a testament to its significance as a topic. Additionally, I’d also like to touch on public perception of trust in these authentication methods and conduct a survey – do we truly trust biometrics, or are we trading privacy for convenience? In a nutshell: How do Apple’s bio-authentication methods work, and why do we rely on them? I’ll be conducting my research by experimenting and surveying people. As for the experiments, they’ll primarily be on the criteria necessary for a ...

Week 3 now – almost a month already! Time’s been passing by really quick.  This week has definitely been something. I unfortunately haven’t made much progress on my research due to an emergency wisdom tooth removal, which was quite the adventure in of itself. However, my face is currently somewhat swollen on one side from the trauma (I swear this is relevant), and it made me wonder: how does Face ID on my iPhone still recognize me? Are there specific facial features it looks for? Or does it make a scan of your entire face? Above: Face ID infrared dot projectors of the iPhone X (2017) in action - a newer version of which is still in use by current iPhones and some Android phones.  Source: iPhone X Review  from The Verge and Nilay Patel New immediate goal: do some tests with Face ID-equipped devices and figure out exactly what  it’s looking for. Although there’s nothing particularly scientific about this just yet, I’ll be documenting my findings as extensively as ...

It's week 2 now! It feels like ages ago when I first applied to be a TRAIN scholar, but here we are! So originally, I was going to do my research on Apple's controversial CSAM detection system in iCloud Photos (and why it was a bad idea) they were planning on implementing with the release of iOS 15, but then I checked my phone one morning, and I awoke to the beautiful sight of this headline: Why'd you have to mess up my research, Tim?! I don't mean to be selfish – this is great news, actually; there's now less worry of even more surveillance on our devices, and in the future they may cancel the feature entirely. I admire Apple for the sentiment behind this, I truly do, but no matter how many failsafes a backdoor may have, a backdoor is still a backdoor, and there will always be potential for exploitation by a government, whether it's that of the United States or elsewhere. This news made me rethink my research a little more, not to mention the fact that finding ...

Hey everyone, welcome to my blog! I’m Chris, and I’m a S-STEM/TRAIN scholar. If you’d like to know more about me, feel free to check out my bio . Now let’s get started! This is a whole new major for me that I’ve always wanted to pursue, but never did until now. This week’s been quite the eventful one.  I’ve made three or so trips to the main campus to speak with an advisor about my degree appearing to be incorrect. Originally, I was an Information Technology major, and I applied for an ASU transfer in Applied Computing, but it kept changing my major to an Associates in Arts for some reason. Multiple advisor visits and phone calls and messages later, it turns out that it’s….correct? An Associates in Arts is required to go into their Applied Computing program. Let that sink in for a second. Weird, right? At least everything’s correct. Aside from that, I’ve been getting settled into my new classes and attempting to learn the basics of Java. Work on the research project is going well...