Nor would they bother explicitly highlighting that it's kept local...

Honestly, to effectively market this technology in today's waters, they have to say that it's kept local.

If they send out 8 bytes of your fingerprint data hidden in every picture you take (so your fingerprint can be regenerated by looking at your first 500 pictures) I doubt anyone will ever find it.

Makes me think of all these companies that your passwords are secure until one day, someone hacks their database and decrypts them. When confronted, the company says "But they were very secure, you should have mentioned that by 'secure' you meant "with one way encryption".

But that's exactly what they want you to think.

Not publicizing it would massively backfire as soon as the first teardown happens.

But would they still go about implementing it? I mean, it sounds crazy from a business perspective.

What if the NSA told them they had to have access to the data, or else jail and whatnot.

Am I understanding this correctly? What if the NSA went to Apple and said you have to get us access to everyone's fingerprints or you'll go to jail and other stuff, so Apple put a fingerprint scanner on the iPhone? It seems like a stretch to me.

More of: - Apple releases the new finger print reader 5S - NSA: "Heyyy ... we'd like those." - Apple: ".... Crap." (or: "Sure!")

Much more likely: "Do it, or your datafeed of intel from industrial espionage will run dry."