Technology

Police investigating the missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi are searching for his Apple Watch to obtain his health and location data before his disappearance. But that may prove impossible, according to new details learned by TechCrunch.

The Saudi-born U.S. resident and Washington Post columnistwent missing last week after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, reportedly to obtain marriage papers. His soon-to-be wife was waiting outside the consulate with KhashoggiiPhone.

Khashoggi never emerged from the consulate, sparking a manhunt. It has been reported but not confirmed that he was killed inside the consulate. The Washington Post reports that U.S. intercepts showed efforts by the Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman to lure the reporter back to the kingdom and detain him.

Khashoggi was a vocal critic of the Saudi government. The Saudi kingdom has denied any involvement with his disappearance.

On Wednesday, Reuters reported, citing Turkish officials, that investigators were looking to Khashoggiblack Apple Watch that he was wearing as he entered the consulate. The inference was that any data collected by the Apple Watch could glean answers into health data, such as his heart rate, location or other clues.

Turkey does not have the watch, Reuters said, suggesting it may have been lost, destroyed or remains in the custody of Saudi authorities.

TechCrunch staff have scoured several photo libraries and social media and found one image of Khashoggi wearing a third-generation Apple Watch — based on the red dot on the watchcrown. The 2017 model comes with an optional LTE connection.

Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, Turkey in May 2018 wearing a third-generation Apple Watch. (Image: Al Sharq Forum/Twitter)

But even if Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate wearing that model, a third-generation Apple Watch does not support cellular connections in Turkey, effectively ruling out any chance that his health data synced either with his iPhone outside or Appleservers.

Italso unlikely that the watch connected to a known Wi-Fi network inside the consulate, or that the watch was within close enough range to sync with his iPhone outside using Bluetooth.

In any case, if health data from Khashoggiwatch was transmitted over the air to AppleiCloud where it could be synced with his iPhone, the data is end-to-end encrypted with his passcode.

Not even Apple — and therefore law enforcement — can access this data, meaning any evidence of his whereabouts will be on his iPhone.

There have been several cases of watches and fitness trackers helping authorities find missing persons, as well ashelp secure prosecutions. As much as wearables help track a personfitness and activity, they store and transmit data thatoften stored in the cloud. That data is often obtainable by law enforcement, which critics say is a privacy risk.

What if you could peek behind whatin your photos, like you&re moving your head to see whatinside a window Thatthe futuristic promise of Facebook 3D photos. After announcing the feature at F8 in May, Facebook is now rolling out 3D photos to add make-believe depth to your iPhone portrait mode shots.Shoot one, tap the new 3D photos option in the status update composer, select a portrait mode photo and users on the desktop or mobile News Feed as well as in VR through Oculus Gobrowser or Firefox on Oculus Rift can tap/click and drag or move their head to see the photodepth. Everyone can now view 3D photos and the ability to create them will open to everyone in the coming weeks.

Facebook is constantly in search of ways to keep the News Feed interesting. What started with text and photos eventually expanded into videos and live broadcasts, and now to 360 photos and 3D photos. Facebook hopes if itthe exclusive social media home for these new kinds of content, you&ll come back to explore and rack up some ad views in the meantime. Sometimes that means embracing mind-bending new formats like VR memories that recreate a scene in digital pointillism based on a photo.

So how exactly do 3D photos work Our writer Devin Coldewey did a deep-dive earlier this year into how Facebook uses AI to stitch together real layers of the photo with what it infers should be there if you tilted your perspective. Since portrait mode fires off both of a phonecameras simultaneously, parallax differences can be used to recreate whatbehind the subject.

To create the best 3D photos with your iPhone 7+, 8+, X or XS (more phones will work with the feature in the future), Facebook recommends you keep your subject three to four feet away, and have things in the foreground and background. Distinct colors will make the layers separate better, and transparent or shiny objects like glass or plastic can throw off the AI.

Originally, the idea was to democratize the creation of VR content. But with headset penetration still relatively low, itthe ability to display depth in the News Feed that will have the greatest impact for Facebook. In an era where Facebookcool is waning, hosting next-generation art forms could make it a must-visit property even as more of our socializing moves to Instagram.

Audit giant PwC is the latest mainstream firm to show new interest in digital currencies. This week it announced apartnershipwith decentralized lending platform Cred to advise on better standards for stablecoins.

While details of the partnership are light, Cred is working on its own stablecoin tied to the U.S. dollar, and is hoping to avoid the mistakes of certain competitors by ensuring confidence in its operations from the ground up.

PwCoverall interest here is to build broader trust so it can help millions of new users gain digital assets — and presumably create new revenue streams for its global professional services business in the process.

Like IBM and other companies large and small that are looking at stablecoins today, PwC is attracted to the blend of traditional and new monetary systems. Stablecoins are digital currencies pegged to a stable asset, such as gold or fiat currencies, or backed by collateral (that could also be a cryptocurrency); the arrangement is analogous to how some countries peg their national currencies to the dollar.

&Many investors are looking for crypto assets that can be pegged to a stable fiat currency such as the US dollar,& PwC and Cred said in the announcement. &But these assets require a reserve ledger built for decentralized assets, that can provide 100% transparency and value substantiation. PwCexperience will provide valuable perspective on how standards can be enhanced to facilitate a more transparent set of reserve functions, stablecoins and deposit and yield products.&

PwC did not comment when we asked whether it has explored partnerships with other stablecoins, nor did it comment on the profile of customers that are looking to adopt these consulting solutions.

Today, stablecoin adoption and real-world implementation are still in the early stages. Despite more stablecoins getting introduced this year, there has not yet been any set of standards established for the space. Some stablecoins that have tried to go through traditional procedures, such as reserve auditing processes, have gone awry thus far, most famously Tether.

Still, optimism seems to be growing. Stablecoins have been in development for some time in the U.S., with multiple companies raising large sums of money to create a price-stable coin since early this year, including Carbon, MakerDAO and TrustToken. The company Basis appears to have raised the most to date, in a whopping $133 million roundfrom top venture firms and financiers announced six months ago.

So far, stablecoin project teams have generally been heads-down developing detailed mechanics of their own coins, and they have been independently working with regulators to ascertain the future of stablecoins and their role in it.

Hence the lack of standardization. In most of the stablecoin teams& mind, there should be only one or just a few stablecoin winners that could capture most of the mind share, and create products and an ecosystem that uses its cryptocurrency. This creates an invisible divide in the ecosystem, with the coins and tokens all trying to outcompete each other.

One outlier in the market has been USDT, a widely tradable stablecoin created by Tether, a company run by the same executives behind the exchange BitFinex&ed. Tether has been criticized for its failure to prove that the reserve has enough USD to back its digital currency on a one-to-one ratio, which it promises for its dollar-pegged cryptocurrency.

Among other issues this year, Tether &dissolved& its relationship with its first auditors, Friedman LLP, without an audit ever being completed. It then commissioned a law firm, not an auditor, to review its reserve balances. The result was its proof of funds& &transparency update& highlighting that it should not be construed as the results of an audit. For more details, check out TechCrunchwriteup back in August.

Meanwhile, PwC is just one of the traditional parties hoping to clean up stablecoins for mass adoption.

IBM most recently announced its exploration into stablecoins through a collaboration with Stellar by building a stablecoin on the Stellar blockchain. Additionally, a number of stablecoins have come out in the last few months, from the crypto exchange Gemini issuing the Gemini Dollar and financial blockchain solution Paxos issuing the Paxos Standard. There are also other stablecoins such as Terra, which is looking to implement a stablecoin through e-commerce.

Cred, for its part, has already been busy laying a strong foundation. It is founded by former PayPal financial technology veterans, with the mission to harness the power of blockchain to allow everyone to benefit from low-cost credit products. The team at Cred did not comment on whether they have worked with a consulting partner before, but they are currently in conversation with other consulting firms.

Cred is also the founding member of the UP Alliance, consisting of Uphold, Cred, Blockchain at Berkeley and Brave. Earlier this year, the Alliance announced a universal transparent reserve and custody standard that introduces what it calls &proxy& digital assets to the world, via the Universal Protocol Platform.

Given that cryptocurrency price volatility continues to be an obstacle for institutions looking to adopt the technology, it is likely that other financial and consulting institutions will turn to stablecoins as a way to support their existing customers and bring in interested new customers.