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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."
Whaddaya wanna bet that there are no more than 15 billion distinct faces in that collection?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I suppose then I have nothing to worry about, since my profile pics are usually cartoons, inanimate objects, and internet memes.
TSA Agent: "Uhh, miss, you don't look anything like your photo." (holds up photo of pedobear)
Me: (triple facepalm)
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
It'll end up like in Minority Report where the advertisements scanned people's eyes to identify and tailor ads to them. Only instead of eyes, faces will be scanned. Which is probably scarier, since scanning a face requires no special biometric equipment. It just needs an old fashioned camera and an internet connection, so that the face image can be sent to a server and processed.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Funny, I didn't notice anything about the technology only working on females.
For the longest time I didn't have a Facebook page because I am a very private person. I used an avatar instead of a photograph thinking that that would suffice.
The very next day when I logged in I saw that multiple people had uploaded photos with me in them, tagged me and added my full name after I had SPECIFICALLY asked them NOT to do so. They laughed it off and eventually got angry when they realized how pissed off I was. When I told one to remove the photos she point blank said, "No. Because you're being fucking PARANOID. This'll do you some good."
So yeah, I'm sure that I'm in there. Screw people.
You're joking, but it's entirely possible.
I recall when I was in High School (in the days of acid-washed jeans and dolphin shorts) I could recognize all the hot girls from a quarter mile away just by the shape and movement of their asses, which I had carefully observed and memorized for later recall.
I can see the fnords!
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.
try http://cvdazzle.com/ for face-detection thwarting ideas. http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/01/how-to/how-to-use-camouflage-to-thwart-facial-recognition
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
They all scoffed when I went to grad school to get my Master of Disguise degree.....
I knew my large beard would come in handy!
I can rob a bank then just shave it off!
And yes, I really do have a magnificent beard. a few more years and I'll be ready to join ZZ Top! Facial hair for the obfuscation!
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Of course, it's concerning that facebook profiles, pictures of you going through customs or from a drivers license etc, are now beginning to be tapped into by the government and private sector alike.
In this case, while I think it's a cause for concern for almost every facebook user, the folks I have the most concern about are activists of various sorts.
Facebook, while famed for its use in the Arab Spring for facilitating communication between activists, hardly seems like a bastion of privacy for US citizens. The Arab spring was a bit different than the activism the US or other Western governments would like to target though -- in fact, they encouraged the uprisings. What about forms of dissent that the US or Western governments don't like?
The most prominent recent example is Occupy Wall Street, and regardless what you think about their message, it's easy to see how some subpoenas to facebook could be used to completely subvert an opposition organization. They would be able to find who these activists are without even arresting them -- they'd be able to use facial recognition software, get information on all their friends and relationships on facebook, and then track them between rallies and protests etc. with more facial recognition.
Imagine if the FBI had this ability in the 1960s to crack down on the civil rights movement?
Maybe a decentralized, p2p form of social networking will make facial recognition and tracking etc more difficult for governments and private companies in the future? Or is it already too late for most since the information is all on Facebook to stay?
Depends who has seen you and what they want. ...
http://www.gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/technology/gadgetbox/look-whos-stalking-10-creepiest-apps-658042
It also depends on they term "anybody" and "arbitrarily".
Get photographed near a protest - inner city financial district, military base, upset an agent provocateur
A few years later you want a good job, fly to distant family - you where just passing, going to work that day - could come back to haunt you.
Many of the databases are one way. No low cost state lawyer or court can make it all better.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Except you can't wear hats, hoodies, or other fashion items like sunglasses in government offices, banks, or some (soon to be most) other businesses.
Huh? I always wear a hat, and have had no problems in banks so far.
I have have been saying it for a while to many people. Not only face recognition which is more recent while voice recognition has been around for decades.
AI systems generates reports for humans to handle. Depending on the humans handling the reports, handling techniques may vary. With well trained handlers, it works well with very few false positives. Unfortunately, well trained handlers are rare and more and more of that functionality is being made available to untrained people.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
I think you're being naive, I am very careful never to post any image of myself anywhere, and yet when I go looking in Facebook I can find images of me associated with my name.
The trouble is, people who know will keep posting pictures and then identifying those pictures. They have no idea what a nightmare they're creating for themselves.
When one of my wifes friends split with her boyfriend, he dug through her facebook friends and started visiting them at home to see if his ex was staying. Suddenly they all realize what they've done with their FB data sharing, but by then its too late.
So you can say you've been careful, but can you say that about everyone you know, who knows you??
He's shaved since then, though....
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
There was a good article about this in The Economist: http://www.economist.com/node/21558263
Few of Afghanistan's 30m people have a birth certificate, a second name or can read. Yet America's army and the Afghan government have collected digital records of more than 2.5m of them. Elsewhere such intrusions would have caused an outcry. But few Afghans, so far, have protested. American officers praise the technology as a helpful counter-insurgency tool: if opponents can be identified, they can be separated from the wider, law-abiding populace.
The data are passed on beyond Afghanistan, to America's army, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Agreements to share data exist with dozens of allied countries. American soldiers in Ghazni once described scanning a dead insurgent, then two days later getting a call from the CIA to say that his record matched someone first scanned in Iraq. Yet as the system grows, so do worries about it. It is involuntary and shrouded in secrecy. It is easy to come across Afghans who claim that they were wrongly denied foreign visas or jobs after a biometric scan flagged up their presence on some watchlist. Evidence held against them is rarely divulged, nor is it clear how they can challenge it.
“There is a vetting process to be put on a watchlist,” says Sergeant-Major Robert Haemmerle, of the American army's Afghanistan biometrics programme. “It's not just a matter of ‘I don't like this guy'. There is a deliberate policy and process to ensure that people's rights are respected, that it's not abused.”
Yet those policies and processes are kept classified by NATO and America's Defence Department. Jennifer Lynch, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group based in San Francisco that keeps a watch on how digital technology encroaches on civil freedoms, also questions the quality of the data. She fears that scans done quickly in the field, or by inexperienced technicians, could lead to cases of mistaken identity.
But the more people who are scanned, the more powerful the database becomes.
But it's not like the US is scanning everyone who enters the country, and adding them to this database . . .
. . . yet.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
It isn't limited to the public. You went to work the day they were taking company photos? You're probably in a photo database somewhere. Go to a small party at a friend's house? See that person taking pictures on their phone? You probably just ended up in multiple photo databases.
Anymore, the only way to not end up in a database is to shut yourself inside your apartment/house, never have any guests, and never leave.
The US government may not be openly using the photos for nefarious ends, but prospective employers make no effort to hide the fact that pictures of you they find online can and will impact whether you get hired.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."