When Apple introduced the iPhone X with great fanfare last week, it did a lot more than what most people think.

First of all, it introduced for the first time a reliable mechanism that is normally used by policemen. Face recognition is an active tool of a police state, of a surveillance state.

This device therefore will make it natural to the next generation that showing your face is not a symptom of a police state, but fun and perhaps even a game. Critically, children will get accustomed to it. And that's the very goal. Any tyranic government could not be happier. France, particularly, is having it. It's time to re-read Noam Chomsky's "manufacturing consent" and La Boetie's "éloge de la servitude".

Second, there is a philosophical difference between face recognition and touch. Face recognition by definition is an entire process you submit to by being subject to it, that is you are never controlling it, never mastering it. Your face can be identified hundred times a day without you knowing it and, obviously, without consenting it at all. In other words automatic face recognition is your worst enemy. It's like driving a vehicle versus being driven by an automatic vehicle. Who is in control?

I think Apple can pride themselves of the act of remanufuring military and police technologies made by others and for different purposes because by making us think this is fun and cool. Perhaps even an act of liberation worth a thousand dollars. But if Apple is let doing such thing, it's because the police state wants it and Apple acts as one of its arms, much like Microsoft with many of their services (you should avoid Microsoft services, it is a matter of safety). If Apple was willing to sale devices that could protect your privacy and let you remain in control of what is going on and your personal data, it's no wonder Apple would have problems shipping it at all.

You can make the conlusion very easily I think. I think Apple should add "Arbeit macht frei" below their Apple logo.