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Facebook Facial Recognition Under Scrutiny In Norway

Posted by timothy on from the stepford-objects-for-a-different-reason dept.

Qedward writes "Certainly not the first country to raise concerns, but Facebook's facial recognition feature will now be investigated by the Norwegian Data Protection Agency. Last year, Facebook added the ability to use facial recognition technology to help to tag images as a default feature to users worldwide. Ove Skåra, communications manager at the Norwegian Data Protection Agency or Datatilsynet said: 'Facial recognition, is a technology that it is important to have critical view of, and see how it is actually used.' Outside of Europe, U.S. Senator Al Franken, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's privacy subcommittee, called on Facebook to turn off the feature by default in July."

15 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmm.... by Rei · · Score: 2

    If I'm not mistaken, doesn't FB learn what you look like based on photos that you've been tagged in?

    So couldn't you, for example, consistently mistag yourself (or even a complete stranger) if you wanted to confuse it? Oh, sure, your friends might wonder why Facebook keeps suggesting that you get tagged whenever a picture of the president's dog shows up, but...

    --
    Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
    1. Re:Hmmm.... by Trepidity · · Score: 1

      I believe that's the case, yes, but it might be harder than that to fool it. It's likely that it ignores things that don't look like human faces when building its model, to weed out the "joke" tags, like when someone tags an inanimate object as one of their friends. So if you kept tagging a dog, it might discount those data points. You'd probably have to consistently mistag another human face as you, and ideally the same person (if you tag a bunch of different people as you it might discount those as spurious tags also).

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    2. Re:Hmmm.... by captainpanic · · Score: 1

      That only works if all your friends cooperate.

    3. Re:Hmmm.... by hobarrera · · Score: 2

      Or, if you're serious about privacy, just don't use facebook or don't upload any photos of yourself.

    4. Re:Hmmm.... by pittaxx · · Score: 1

      You don't have to upload photos of yourself - there are always those school photos that pop up (where you would offend a bunch of people if you untag yourself) or random photos by other people you didn't even notice being taken... I'd say not using facebook is the only way to protect your privacy, unless you live in a deserted island.

    5. Re:Hmmm.... by Tore+S+B · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but that kind of defeats the point of Facebook's extremely powerful photo sharing systems, though.

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      toresbe
    6. Re:Hmmm.... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      If you create an account it will immediately suggest people you might know when you first log in. That suggests that Facebook is already building shadow profiles of people based on names mentioned and unknown faces in photographs.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    7. Re:Hmmm.... by hobarrera · · Score: 1

      I think the earier explanation, is that those profile's oweners submited YOUR address book to facebook, so as soon as you registered, facebook already knew that you were in their address book.

    8. Re:Hmmm.... by hobarrera · · Score: 1

      You worry about offending people that publicly distribute photographs of yourself without permission? I think you've got your priorities wrong.

      You can even disallow being tagged on facebook (it requests your confirmation, and you can just deny every request).

  2. Re:Stop the presses! by EmagGeek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Please explain to me how setting the switch to the "off" position by default limits consumer access to the technology.

  3. Norwegian here by Quakeulf · · Score: 1

    But Datatilsynet themselves want to survey anything that is posted on the internet by Norwegians. This does not make sense.

    1. Re:Norwegian here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Norwegian here who actually studies shit, but Datatilsynet is actually the agency who has been most strongly critical towards the EU directive and is one of the leading governmental institutions in the world when it comes to protecting personal privacy. The privacy directive that was crafted at Oslo University in the late 1970's on the request of the parliament, was used as the basis for Norway's digital privacy laws and served as a template for many other European countries.

      Basically you're full of shit and have no idea about what the amazing institution really stands for.

  4. Re:Why is it harmful? by captainpanic · · Score: 1

    I don't see the problem with it. It's not like privacy exists in the first place.

    Not anymore. But some people want it back, or at least to make privacy optional again. So, there you have your problem.

  5. Re:Stop the presses! by mcgrew · · Score: 1

    I don't want government to limit consumer access to tech at all, but I certainly want them to keep a firm regulatory grip on what the 1% can do to fuck over, exploit, and damage the 99%. You don't become a billionaire by being altruistic. We need fewer laws that limit you, more that limit corporations.

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    Free Martian Whores!
  6. First Apple, now FB by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The Norwegian Data Protection Authority is now led by Bjørn Erik Thon. Thon was the leader of the Norwegian Consumer Council which in 2007 outlawed Apple's iTunes store for it's DRM, as noted by Slashdot: http://apple.slashdot.org/story/07/01/25/2341240/norway-outlaws-itunes

    He succeeded back then.