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Germany Says Facebook's Facial Recognition Is Illegal
fysdt writes "Although we think it's generally a pretty nifty feature, valid concerns over the misuse of Facebook's auto-recognition tagging have lead Germany to ban it entirely. That's right — Facebook in its current state is now illegal. The German government, which possesses perhaps the world's most adamant privacy laws as a result of postwar abuse, considers Facebook's facial recognition a violation of 'the right to anonymity.'"
That shit is orwellian in how scary it is. You there, in 12b. Do more push-ups. Your facebook photos are getting fatter.
Finally someone recognizes the right of "not being recognized without consent".
The whole damn site is a privacy violation. I don't even use FB and I know that there are photos of me floating around on there, tagged by my so-called "friends." Short of being a hermit, I have no way to stop people from uploading data that identifies me to a site that makes money by exploiting that knowledge to sell shit.
...you could just turn that feature off.
it is comforting to hear this while the rest of the world it trying to outlaw anonymity on the net.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The German government, which possesses perhaps the world's most adamant privacy laws as a result of postwar abuse [...]
Could someone please explain what is meant/implied by "postwar abuse" here? Post WW1? Sorry, I don't get it :(
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Just for starters: No court has ruled yet.
There has been an opinion from the germanys chief privacy officer, but this is not a court ruling or something else the police could enforce. Though he is likely to be right (in terms of european and german law), this FB face recognition is not officialy illegal.
I realize that Slashdotters in the main have a libertarian-ish bent, but you guys really need to understand that when these Web 2.0 moguls stand up and say "privacy is dead" they do have a leg to stand on. An awful lot of people the world over, especially in the US, do not fetishize anonymity to anywhere near the extent that you do. Mostly people don't give a damn because they never do anything anonymously themselves, and then on the rare occasion when they have to conjure up an opinion on the subject they're pissed off because someone calling themselves anonymous (with or without a capital A) just did something rash or obnoxious. They do not know the names Brutus and Publius. They think the Pentagon Papers was a novel by Charles Dickens, and as far as they know Voltaire's Candide is the instruction manual for the first lightbulb.
This is not to say that people don't respect anti-establishment thinking. Christ and his later student Luther, Cicero and his distant colleague Paine, and even the antithetical squawkers Ron Paul and Rachel Carson, for instance, all earned respect in their own times precisely because they were willing to stand up and let their names be associated with their opinions. They were, of course, all called nasty things for not swimming with the current like the other fishies, and at least one of them got his hands chopped off and (maybe) stuffed in his mouth by one of the people he'd been criticizing. But they've had a far longer-lasting impact on the things they wanted to try to change than any pseudonymous wag ever has.
Anonymity, of course, isn't the real issue because it's perfectly simple for anyone to install Adblock, stay off Facebook, and generally lurk in the shadows unnoticed. Every time I hear "OMG they're killing anonymity" I hear "OMG they're killing my God-given right to say or do whatever I want and avoid responsibility!" Perhaps they don't realize that this argument puts them in the company of Phoebe Prince's tormentors as much as Voltaire and the Federalists.
But this is my central complaint about libertarianism: it disingenuously ignores the consequences of conduct. Privacy, more often than not, really is a shield for misconduct. Is it your right to be unseen at a bar when you're cheating on your wife, or kissing another man, or doing whatever it is you're so ashamed of your friends and family finding out about? Well, clearly not, because you were there for some kid to take your picture and get you automagically tagged on Facebook for your wife or father confessor to find out about. So how in the hell can you get angry that it's now less easily concealed?
Privacy, I might add, is not the same thing as the right against unwarranted police and government intrusion. That particular conflation is no older than William O. Douglas. So don't accuse me of promoting a police state, because I'm not. I still believe in the 4th amendment and I still think police need to get warrants to do so much as peek in your garbage bin. The behavior we're talking about here, however, is by private actors (Facebook and Google and Apple and whoever) in relation to other private actors.
"But," some will object, "what I'm doing anonymously is morally OK but my culture doesn't tolerate it, like smoking pot or having an obscure religious viewpoint!" Did it ever occur to anyone that part of the problem with this kind of conduct is that concealment reinforces the notion that there's something bad or wrong with what's being done? Hell, if all the people who had ever smoked pot were to admit to it, either half the adult population of America would be in prison or it wouldn't be a crime to smoke pot.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is this: anonymity and privacy are rapidly extinguishing in our culture, and though it's likely to be messy I doubt the change is going to destroy free society any more than it did to take the US off the gold standard or give women the vote. These are cultural conventions, remember, ones that other, newer values are displacing.
So, there's my rant. Mod me into oblivion for disagreeing with the current groupthink on Slashdot, or just ignore me. I'm kind of an asshole anyway. But it's not just me you're ignoring, it's your family, neighbors, and fellow citizens too.
... since it can do a pretty decent job at identifying people from their appearance.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Personally I'd like to know what the "post war privacy abuses" that TFA is speaking of that turned Germany so pro privacy.
How quickly we forget that before 1990 what we now know as "Germany" included *EAST* Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
The East German Stasi had a network where neighbours ratted each other out, had huge databases listing all kinds of data of their citizens... On and on. As a consequence, much of Germany now has a huge pro-privacy culture, and a sense that citizens must 'never again' be tracked.
Can you use DMCA method to take down the photos.? Obviously, you have to prove that the photos. contain you to the authorities. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
As I understand it, it's not so much the facial recognition itself as the auto-tagging that is the perceived problem. This is easily fixed by Facebook: make this one of the privacy options, and default it to "no". In that case you have to opt-in, which means informed consent.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Wait, so people you used to know (maybe from school or something) have to ask your permission to recognize you if they should bump into you at the mall? Or do you live in your parent's basement?
Anyone playing the race card has lost the argument already before opening his mouth.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Facebook is a data-mining and advertising company. They can and will sell all that information any time they feel like it.
Race card? I was always under the impression that being Jewish was a religion, not a "race".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Amazing cars, unbelievable roads (with no speed limits in some cases!), good beer, good food, cool people, and a government that fights for its peoples privacy? When did moving to Germany become attractive? How did we in the US reverse our roles with the krauts?
Deutschland über alles i'm afraid
Race card? I was always under the impression that being Jewish was a religion, not a "race".
As with most things, it's very easy to make up your mind if you choose to ignore the last hundred years of debate and scholarship on the topic.
Breakfast served all day!
Not sure who the "we" is in the summary, but I don't know anyone who thinks the facial recognition feature is anything other than creepy.
Read Pynchon.
This is about automated, mass identification for profit without a clear way to disable it, opt-out, or delete the data, nor do people really know who ends up with this information and what those buyers can do with it.
Account menu -> Privacy Settings -> Customize -> "Suggest photos of me to friends" Settings -> Disabled
Seems pretty clear to me, as it is a logical progression through the menus and pages. It's not hard to find. It is easy to disable. It's probably already disabled for many people.
And, at least on my account, it was disabled by default. i.e. As soon as I heard about this feature, I went immediately to my account privacy settings to turn it off and found that it was already turned off.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
I don't know how the submitter forgot pre-war abuse as well as more abuse than is to be expected during the war. Gestapo, anyone?
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Did that right consent to being recognized?
... he don't look right to me, put him up against the wall!...
And the hammers march on.
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
I recognize the right of others to not recognize without consent.
Finally someone recognizes the right of "not being recognized without consent".
Precisely, and that's the problem.
If Facebook's feature is illegal, so is any and all other form of random recognition. If you meet someone by chance on the street, you are not allowed to recognize this person. Not even in your mind. Well, unless you get approval in advance. But in order to do that you have to recognize and initiate contact, and you're not allowed to recognize without prior consent...
Am I the only one to think that the law in its interpretation in relation to Facebook is stupid? - because unless the law specifically is meant to discriminate against Facebook, this is how it has to be interpreted.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
I'm pretty sure he was joking. :)
If someone has a picture up there in which I can be recognized, but not tagged me in it, I'd never know. This feature will auto-tag me and presumably let me know just like any other tagging on Facebook. If I don't like the picture I can ask to have it removed. I can't do that if I don't know it's there.
If people are concerned with pictures of them behaving stupidly, revealing infidelity and insurance scams (in relation to work related injuries) and similar, the advice is mind-numbingly simple: JUST DON'T DO STUPID STUFF LIKE THAT!
When out in public always remember that someone might snap a picture of you and you'll never know where that picture ends up - Facebook, on some website, in possession of someone who'll use it for blackmail or similar. It's that simple. Don't do stupid things just because you think nobody is looking or you're too drunk to care. Just don't get that drunk, plain and simple.
But if you don't care, just go out and enjoy life. Get drunk or high or whatever. Hope that you don't get caught, one way or the other.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
From the original source (http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20110803-36703.html):
"Johannes Caspar, Hamburg’s data protection official, on Tuesday said the feature was a serious violation of people’s rights to determine what is done with their personal data. He added that German authorities would take quick legal action if Facebook did not comply with his demands.
This could include fines of up to €300,000 ($426,000), Caspar said.
“Should Facebook maintain the function, it must ensure that only data from persons who have declared consent to the storage of their biometric facial profiles be stored in the database,” he said."
At the moment this is just an opinion of the appointed guy for data protection of the city state of Hamburg. Not even a minister/secretary. Although he certainly has a point and Facebook could be fined, Germany is not Iran. We don't just "ban" stuff.
It's not so much the recognition itself it's the fact that FB stores that information and let's others, who do not know you, "recognise" you.
If you can find it I thoroughly recommend the German film "The Lives of Others"
The problem is not the facial recognition itself, it's the tagging and linking of faces you recognized with the faces and profiles of others, that's done a) automatically and b) without you being able to opt out.
So from a privacy law point of view it's totally ok to tag all your Picasa pictures with the names of the people - as long as you don't share this information with anyone else. And that's the problem with Facebook's way of doing things.
Because your profile picture can not be opted out of the face recognition in Facebook, it's still possible to link pictures others share, and where they tag you, to your profile. And that's the privacy violation Germany is complaining about.
AFAIK, it's pretty much both. It's one of the few religions that don't go out and try to 'spread the faith'. I'm no expert on religion, but IIRC there are even a few Jews who take it as far as not considering anyone a Jew who didn't have a Jewish mother, no matter whether he converted or otherwise tried to join the club.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In theory that's the way it should be. However, this is Germany. Somebody just has to vaguely imply "anti-semitism" to win an argument. We have very influential Jewish organisations that don't get tired to remember us of WW2 and cry anti-semitism as soon as somebody criticises Israel or somebody who is Jewish.
I realise that casual racism is compulsory on the Internet, but it's possible that some race-based arguments are correct. Every criticism of Israel is not anti-semitic, but every large database system with the ability to identify and catalogue humans certainly has the potential for abuse.
To stop this abuse requires a multi-pronged attack, one avenue being to prevent the system being created in the first place. Arguments that any tool is OK to build and deploy as long as it's used properly are naive and narrow-minded, deliberately denying the responsibility of every participant in wider society. When Hardy talked of his love for number theory, he talked of its purity and lack of applicability to nasty human behaviour: he was wrong, and hard cryptography has become a useful tool of war. Perhaps he can be forgiven for his ignorance. A geek who contributes to a human tracking system cannot be.
That's certainly nice of them (and quite unexpected from previous experience) to finally have some settings default to privacy. I would be interested to know if it stays that way the next time FB fiddles with the ToS or the privacy options. That's not minding the sheer number of privacy options and settings which makes all the harder for the less technically inclined to set correctly if they didn't give up immediately.
The interesting thing to thing about, though, is how they know not to suggest you. To me, that seems like they have a pattern for you for recognizing your mug and are programed to not offer suggestions. Now because they don't tell your friends to tag you in photos, does that mean advertisers also don't get to put together a profile based on your face and products also found in photos?
Judaism is a religion, but jew is also a race. You are regarded as a jew if your mother was a jew (except by hitler, who counted grandparents on either side). My mother's mother's mother was a German jew who escaped in the '30s, which makes me a jew (and, technically, entitled to israeli citizenship if I want it and jump through some hoops, unless they've changed the rules recently).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yeah thats one of the big sticking points of difference between Orthodox and Liberal judaism is that you can convert in liberal judaism fairly easy whereas its an extremely complicated process (possibly not even possible) in orthodox judaism.
Its also been a big bone of contention in israel as to whether recognising converts .... well lets not go there, I detest that a modern western country still hasn't understood that the minute a government takes religion into account for citizenship your living in an undeclared theocracy. Alas.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
You have the right not to introduce yourself, resulting in a situation where people may recognize your face, but do not know your name.
Facebook's face recognition removes that right, and even removes the burden that someone has to ask someone else about your name.
-- You have nothing to hide? Don't come crying to me when all your personal data is available on the internet for everyone to see.
Sadly, that's not limited to Germany. Criticism of Israel is prone to cries of anti-semitism. Especially ludicrous when directed at people like me, who are sufficiently jewish to have ended up in the death camps and have relatives names up on the wall of remembrance in the holocaust museum.
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Are you arguing that computers should have the same rights as people?
The Gestapo, despite portrayal in popular culture, were nowhere near as bad as the stasi. Of course, there were also the SS and SA that you had to watch out for as well, but it was the Stasi that were the inspiration for Orwell's Thought Police. The Stasi learned from all of the techniques of the Gestapo and improved on them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It's both. There are large number of Jewish people who identify as "cultural Jew" but not "religious Jew", i.e. they're from a Jewish parentage but they're not active within the Jewish religion; they will celebrate passover, chanukah, etc with their families - because they're a cultural as well as religious practice - but you'll rarely find them in a synagogue.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
I don't defend our government much, in fact I think it's the current one is the worst this country has ever had (i.e. since WW2).
So it's no surprise that I don't have to. The real truth is that the stupid government hasn't done anything. Including here.
What has happened is that one of the privacy watchdogs (yes, we actually pay people to watch out for privacy invasions. Guess who they call out regularily? Yes, that's right, the government!) has raised the issue formally, declaring that in his opinion the facial recognition and some other features violate existing laws.
That's got nothing to do with the government. In fact, if they had their way, we wouldn't be having this much privacy anymore, they've been undermining it for years.
What it will go to if Facebook doesn't cave in is the courts.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
yup, this is Germany.
Once you realise the first time there was computerised cataloging of individuals, it was used to divvy them up into those who will be sent to the gas chamber and those who would be good blue-eyed blonds. You can understand why this is a big deal and why the law is set as it is. Even facebook doesn't get an opt-out for this.
That's certainly nice of them (and quite unexpected from previous experience) to finally have some settings default to privacy. I would be interested to know if it stays that way the next time FB fiddles with the ToS or the privacy options. That's not minding the sheer number of privacy options and settings which makes all the harder for the less technically inclined to set correctly if they didn't give up immediately.
That's why I pretty much scramble for the privacy settings every time I see a news story about a new FaceBook feature. However, either a.) I've been lucky and they overlooked setting "on" as default for new features in my account or b.) they somehow actually take into account the privacy amount of current settings and make the new setting in line with that (e.g. if someone has everything shared with everyone, then the new thing defaults to "on", but if someone is like me and has things fairly well locked down and controlled, then the new thing defaults to "off"), or c.) something else.
I don't know how they do it. All I know is that whenever a story hits and people start freaking out about what FaceBook is doing to their privacy, I check my account settings and find I have no obvious cause to complain. Of course, the closet conspiracy theorist inside me suggests the possibility that the settings aren't actually protected when it comes to sharing data with advertisers or for other purposes, but he has no evidence of that yet, so I tell him to shut up. ;)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
So my name won't ever appear on pictures my sister posted up on hers.
Did you feel that rumble? Did you hear that sound? Well it wasn't no earthquake, but it shook the ground. It made me think about power, like it or not: I got to work for earth for what it's worth, 'Cause it's the only earth we've got. Shut 'um Down! If that's the only way to keep them from melting down! Shut 'um Down! If that's the only way to keep them from melting down! I've heard a lot about safety and human error. A few dials and gauges is just a wing and a prayer. If you need perfection, and that's what it takes, Then you can't use people, don't need people, You know people make mistakes... Shut 'um Down! If that's the only way to keep them from melting down! Shut 'um Down! If that's the only way to keep them from melting down!
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
the mass surveillance and privacy violations occured all through the 1930s and were perpetrated by the Nazis as a prelude to political assassinations, repression, prison camps, etc. the SS had informers all over the place. people's personal information was recorded on a mass scale partly thanks to IBM Germany.
and no, you cant say 'ibm was separated from ibm germany in the war'. the nazis came to power in 1933. the war started in 1939. IBM was intimately involved in germany and did not get disentangled until well after 1939 - even then they still kept communications open through 'back channels' using their european headquarters.
the story summary is just, flat out wrong. the german privacy laws go back far before the 'stasi'
and in fact the Stasi inherited a lot of its philosophy and its personnel from the nazis.
considering that germany has one of the strongest economies in europe, it probably isnt doing much to hurt it.
I don't see how laws about gathering and maintaining databases of personal information would apply to you recognising someone on the street.
If you're going to comment on a subject involving the deaths of millions of people can you please do a little research first?
You are insulting the dead by in any way defending the Gestapo.
The Stasi were horrible but they didn't butcher millions so how do you get that the Gestapo were nowhere near as bad as the stasi?
I tried data polluting on FB, tagging myself incorrectly. I even started a Facebook "Data Camouflage" Group http://www.facebook.com/groups/151915044879668/ in order to get other people to mis-tag their images. What I found was that after I mistagged a certain number of friends, etc., that my "tagging" was turned off. I lost the ability to camouflage. That would be concrete evidence that there is "no clear way" to opt-out.
Gently reply
Race card? I was always under the impression that being Jewish was a religion, not a "race".
Then you were mistaken. It's both.
There are Jews from so many different ethnicities that it's an absolute nonsense to talk about a Jewish race. In the same way that Muslims, Catholics or Buddhists aren't a race.
Seconded. Deeply thought-provoking, beautifully made, and highly educational to boot!
I don't think its good that employers are going to be spidering social media, blogs and voyeur sites, then cross referencing with their HR databases. No amount of legislation or tut-tutting over facebook will stop that, and its going to be with us until we loosen up and stop caring that it matters what people are up to.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Sometimes your old pictures really don't fit your latest image.
Wait, so people you used to know (maybe from school or something) have to ask your permission to recognize you if they should bump into you at the mall?
Hey, I've gone to great lengths not to be recognized by people I knew when I was in high school. I've put on about 75 lbs, lost all my hair (except for my goatee, which is very grey), moved all the way across the country, walk with a discernible limb and I've completely lost my youthful, carefree attitude, sense of adventure, 'to each his own' philosophy and sense of humor. In fact the only thing about me that hasn't changed is my taste in music and addiction to enchiladas. I'm pretty sure they'll need more than my permission to recognize me.
Facebook should "auto-tag" photos, but only to let the people in the photos that a photo of them has appeared on the site. Then: 1) Pictures with recognizable people should be quarantined 2) All persons on facebook must consent to having the image of them on facebook. 3) If there isn't already the possibility... any tagged person should have the right to prevent certain groups (colleague, parents, children) from seeing the image. 4) facebook should implement a blur function... so that one can "remove" oneself from the photo, and then give permission. 5) any face in the image, who isn't a facebook user (yes those do exist)... should also be blurred out. Also any one who tags a photo as having you in it when you are not...... should be "tag banned" for life !!! Simple :)
Don't forget that this discussion, in Germany, is decades old because the police keep bringing it up as something that could help them find terrorists :) Detecting faces is fairly new, but e.g. there's been extensive discussion of automatic detection of car license plates on the Autobahn. Just implementing it is not going to go well after more than 40 years of discussion, no matter who does it and why and how it's presented...
but it was the Stasi that were the inspiration for Orwell's Thought Police.
This would have been quite an accomplishment, considering that Orwell finished writing Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1948, published in 1949, and the MfS was not founded until the following year. I am not an English major, but I believe he based his material primarily on an extrapolation of the possibility that Great Britain would adopt fascist policies of its own. Although it does seem he had a lot to say about both Stalin and Hitler.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
As the other poster said, the death camps were not the Gestapo's responsibility. Hitler maintained power by minimising inter-agency communication and having the various military, civilian intelligence, and police agencies fight among themselves.
The SS ran the death camps, the Gestapo were the secret branch of the civilian police. Most of the places you see the Gestapo in films were more likely to have been SS, SD, or SiPo officers in reality. The Gestapo gets used because everyone recognises them as baddies. Their main role was silencing political dissent, not genocide. They were more feared because they could target anyone, while the SS would probably leave you alone if you weren't a Jew, gypsy, homosexual, or Jehovah's Witness. The Gestapo was a relatively small force - much smaller than the SS or the Stasi - so most of their power came from promoting the belief that they could strike anywhere. They paid or blackmailed people to inform on their friends (an art that the Stasi vastly improved). They were mainly bureaucrats who processed reports from informants. The actual execution was left to the SS.
My great grandparents had siblings die in the death camps, so please don't accuse me of trivialising them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Hmm... I can see the point about privacy. I can also see a point about giving Facebook the right to own the data that users do 'sign' over to them when they upload it and run whatever algorithms on it that they want.
As governments everywhere are installing more and more cameras in public places and developing facial recognition software themselves I have to wonder if this isn't really about trying to keep their own capabilities out of the hands of the common people. Oh well, I live in the US where I can do whatever I want so long as I can find a big name corporate backer to buy the politicians for me.
You - and only you - have got the right to decide how your personal data is used/stored.
Americans: So basically it's HIPAA for all your data instead of just medical stuff.
Lets say this scenerio: you a have few "conflicting" social circles and you are not suppose to have gatherings with one circle or another. You don't want either circle to know you still have social ties with the opposite circle, however they found this out thru the unconsented photo tagging, and causes unwanted "attention"
Well, i guess its quite common in real life as your social circle expands and conflict of interests deemed to arise, but shouldn't new functions make your life easier than causing extra havoc?
Lets say this scenario: you a have few "conflicting" social circles and you are not suppose to have gatherings with one circle or another. You don't want either circle to know you still have social ties with the opposite circle, however they found this out thru the unconsented photo tagging, and causes unwanted "attention"
Well, i guess its quite common in real life as your social circle expands and conflict of interests deemed to arise, but shouldn't new functions make your life easier than causing extra havoc?
I think it comes from Alemanic tribes whose descendents live in parts of Southern Germany and Switzerland. In Germany it is mostly the area of the modern state of Baden-Württemberg.
When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion
I detest that a modern western country still hasn't understood that the minute a government takes religion into account for citizenship your living in an undeclared theocracy. Alas.
Not just citizenship. Any secular state should be completely blind to religion. It's just another form of voluntary human organization. It should have no recognition by the state whatsoever.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It does make life complicated though.
I have no issue with people that have Jewish ethnicity. I have no issue with people that are Israeli (and not all of them are Jewish, by ethnicity or religion).
I have major issues with people that practice the Jewish religion.
Unfortunately it's difficult to slag off the theist cunts without being accused of racism, due to the arbitrary linkage between ethnicity and religion.
Does that make me intolerant? No more than in relation to any other religion, and there's nothing bigoted or xenophobic about it at all.
You don't know what you are talking about.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
You have no privacy in public. You can't legislate around the simple fact that other people can see your face. If you really need your privacy on public streets, wear a mask. Restricting the ability of photographers to engage in their craft in public spaces because you can't apply a little common sense is needlessly authoritarian.
There is a huge difference between a few people seeing you in public and anyone, word-wide being able to search for pictures of you in various public situations. I don't see how anybody can equate those things! Also laws in probably every country restrict the ability of various people to engage in their craft. My gripe, for example, is not with people taking pictures of something where I may appear in the background, but in making these pictures available to a broad public. I'd like to add that I am a German national living in the US. And, I am frequently appalled by how US corporations can share and sell personal data about me just so they can try to more effectively harass me with their advertising garbage and/or use it to potentially discriminate against me, based on medical conditions etc. that I may or may not have! While I may not be a typical German in a lot of ways (I am not a soccer fan, for example), I sure am in terms of valuing my privacy!
When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion