I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry. Apple’s going to encrypt the data and make sure that it’s stored locally in the processor, not in the Cloud. Which guarantees that prying eyes at the NSA can’t, er, access it or … decipher it even if they could.

No, actually, the real reason you shouldn’t worry about this is because the NSA probably has your fingerprints already. Don’t some states require fingerprinting, in fact, when applying for a driver’s license? The big problem with a fingerprint scanner might not be the privacy implications but the technical implications. The scanner decays with use over time, naturally, and the iPhone’s scanner is bound to get a lot of use. How many touches, smudges, smears, and wipes can the home button take before it starts to have trouble reading the owner’s print?

In other news, the new iPhone 5s comes with … not enough to keep an erstwhile Apple fanboy like me interested. Said our tech wizard, Mark Jaquith, of the new 64-bit processor, “‘What I really want in a phone is a gaming machine that will deliver eye-melting graphics for about an hour and then die’ said no one ever.” I fear the time has come, my friends, to consider Android. End of an era. Exit quotation via the Onion: “Apple Unveils Panicked Man With No Ideas.”