The NSA is testing technology to identify you by your swipes on a phone screen

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(Image credit: iStock)

The National Security Agency (NSA) is working with Lockheed Martin to develop technology that identifies smartphone users by the speed, pressure, and pattern of their touchscreen swipes. The project is called Mandrake, and it's designed to complement other biometric identifiers.

No two smartphone users have "the same strokes," explains John Mears of Lockheed. "People can forge your handwriting in two dimensions, but they couldn't forge it in three or four dimensions. Three is the pressure you put in, in addition to the two dimensions on the paper. The fourth dimension is time. The most advanced handwriting-type authentication tracks you in four dimensions."

Lockheed representatives say they do not know how or if the NSA is using the swipe identification technology so far.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.