EFF: Americans May Not Know It, But Many Are In a Face Recognition Database Now

colinneagle writes "People are not going to, nor should they have to, start walking around outside with a bag over their head to avoid security cameras capturing images of them. Yet 'face recognition allows for covert, remote and mass capture and identification of images — and the photos that may end up in a database include not just a person's face but also how she is dressed and possibly whom she is with. This creates threats to free association and free expression not evident in other biometrics,' testified EFF Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch. There are 32 states that use some form of facial recognition for DMV photos. Every day, Facebook happily slurps up and automatically scans with facial recognition software about 300 million photos that users upload to the social networking giant. 'Face recognition is here to stay, and, though many Americans may not realize it, they are already in a face recognition database,' Lynch said. In fact, when you stop to consider Facebook "at least 54% of the United States population already has a face print." Now it purchased Face.com which had 31 billion face images profiled."

Comments

The Onion Had It Right...

[middlemen]

http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/ Months ago the Onion came out with this news.. the EFF is just catching up to the reality of it.

Re:Only as good as the data

[JaredOfEuropa]

That's the "Amercians may not know" mistake right there (and that goes for non-Americans as well, of course)

It's all fun and games today - we can drop our social networking sites or choose not to participate and it's no big deal.

Even if you drop all social media accounts and stop participating... your friends won't. They upload a few nice photos from the company picnic, upload them to Facebook / Google+, and obligingly tag all persons in those photos (including you). Now Zuck & Brinster have a name to go with your face, which they can apply to all subsequent photos with you in it.