Apple’s new Vision Pro is a privacy mess waiting to happen – WaPo

Apple Vision Pro
Apple’s new Vision Pro is “a privacy mess waiting to happen,” according to Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler.
Geoffrey A. Fowler for The Washington Post:
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Imagine you’re in a waiting room, and someone sits next to you with four iPhones strapped to their forehead. You might swiftly relocate.
Yet that’s exactly what’s happening when someone straps on Apple’s new Vision Pro headset. Each of these goggles contains the rough equivalent to a head full of iPhones: 2 depth sensors, 6 microphones and 12 cameras. It uses them to continuously track people and rooms in three dimensions — every hand gesture, eyeball flick and couch cushion… [T]his device collects more data than any other personal device I’ve ever seen.
At launch, Apple has taken steps to restrict some of the data collected by the Vision Pro, including what people’s eyes are looking at. That’s a very good thing. But there are also new kinds of risks Apple doesn’t appear to have addressed, or might not be able to given how the tech works.
I see a privacy mess waiting to happen. Among the new dilemmas flagged to me by privacy researchers: Who gets to access the maps these devices build of our homes and data about how we move our bodies? A Vision Pro could reveal much more than you realize… you’ve got a 75-inch television, suggesting you might have more money to spend than someone with a 42-inch set. Since the device can understand objects, it could also detect if you’ve got a crib or a wheelchair or even drug paraphernalia, he says.
Advertisers and data brokers who build profiles of consumers would salivate at the chance to get this data. Governments, too.
To combat people being surreptitiously filmed with the Vision Pro, there’s an indicator on the device’s front screen when it’s shooting a photo or video. Apple also isn’t allowing third-party Vision Pro apps to access the camera to capture photos and videos. That would, in theory, also prevent third-party apps from doing creepy things like running facial recognition algorithms on people while you’re looking at them.

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MacDailyNews Take: Of course Apple’s new Vision Pro is a privacy mess waiting to happen. As is every new technology. Thankfully, Vision Pro is from Apple, so privacy will be a concern and the company will, as they’ve done repeatedly with every other product, work to evolve privacy protections as issues become evident.
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