Facebook Re-enables Tag Suggestions Face-Recognition Feature In the US

An anonymous reader writes "Facebook has brought back its photo Tag Suggestions feature to the U.S. after temporarily suspending it last year to make some technical improvements. Facebook says it has re-enabled it so that its users can use facial recognition 'to help them easily identify a friend in a photo and share that content with them.' Facebook first rolled out the face recognition feature across the U.S. in late 2010. The company eventually pushed photo Tag Suggestions to other countries in June 2011, but in the US there was quite a backlash. Yet Facebook doesn't appear to have made any privacy changes to the feature: it's still on by default."

Comments

I guess all those natives were right

[eksith]

A camera really can steal your soul.

Facebook is a good idea taken way too far and a userbase that refuses to acknowledge that fact. If we've learned anything from history, people are more than willing to go along with anything that even includes physical assault for the sake of recognition. A little violation of privacy is no sweat.

Re:I guess all those natives were right

[poetmatt]

facebook has said they endorse apple's "complete control" model. So anyone who trusts facebook after that, is making a big mistake - not one they weren't already warned of.

Just like viruses, it's going to get a lot worse before people start figuring out what to do about it and what not to do. It's still in the "only the technical people who get it are saying stop using it" category.

Re:I guess all those natives were right

[icebike]

having your face recognized in a photo that you already appear in, to people who already know you

Such naivety! One has to marvel!

Within a couple years every face will be identifiable on line in every picture you take whether or not you know the person or not, even if that person does not have a facebook account.

Face recognition plus Graph Search means nobody is safe from they prying eyes of facebook.
If the FBI/CIA/NSA/Scotland Yard tried to set this up, world plus dog would be howling in protest.

(Oh, and before you spout any privacy protections, let me offer a loud scoff of derision in your general direction: HA!)

Re:I guess all those natives were right

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Pretty easy to defeat this. Tag yourself as other people in all of your friend's photographs. The multiple sources will break the facial recognition database.

Re:I guess all those natives were right

[Frosty Piss]

Face recognition plus Graph Search means nobody is safe from they prying eyes of facebook.
If the FBI/CIA/NSA/Scotland Yard tried to set this up, world plus dog would be howling in protest.

The difference is that Facebook is "opt-in". You know, "don't like it, don't use it". That sort of thing.

Re:I guess all those natives were right

[Digicaf]

Except that it's not. People can, and will, tag you in a photo without your general awareness. I believe you can even tag people without an account.

Re:I guess all those natives were right

[oxdas]

But Facebook has already admitted to creating "shadow accounts" for people who have not opted in. They still track their behavior through like buttons around the internet unless you surf with noscript, etc.They still try to learn faces, habits, etc. and they also sell the information.

Re:I guess all those natives were right

[CanHasDIY]

From Summary:

Yet Facebook doesn't appear to have made any privacy changes to the feature: it's still on by default.

..."opt-in"...

You keep using that phrase, but I do not think it means what you think it means...

Re:I guess all those natives were right

[sjames]

That's not the problem. The problem is when it becomes searchable. Your potential new employer does a search and comes up with that picture from a high school party you didn't know was taken. You know, that party where you knew exactly one person out of the 50 or so there? The one that, as you are about to find out, was also attended by the person who later went on to become a notorious drug dealer (who you never even noticed). Sorry sir, BozoBank international doesn't hire people who party with known felons.

Wouldn't you have preferred to remain just that anonymous guy sitting in the background looking like he's about to bail on the lamest party ever?

Re:I guess all those natives were right

[s.petry]

That would actually be a great opensource project.. Hmmmm.. the "break my recognition project". "How come this Gerald Whazzisname" looks like a baseball? Well commander, that's what all our searches return.

Re:I guess all those natives were right

[Charliemopps]

It goes far, far beyond even what you're thinking:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2187801/Were-watching-The-camera-recognise-Facebook-picture-time-walk-shop.html

Facebook is putting their own cameras in public with built in facial recognition software. They will track everywhere you go, what you do while you're there, what you buy, what you eat, what you look at and don't buy. Every single thing you do will be logged in their databases, and then sold to... well... pretty much everyone. How much do you want to bet their biggest customer will be the federal government?

It appears that Orwell was off by about 30 years when he wrote 1984.

Re:I guess all those natives were right

[davester666]

I wonder how many goatze images would need to be uploaded and tagged as zuckerberg before it becomes the definitive photo of him?

Is it 1984, or am I a conspiracy theorist?

[TheDarkener]

Perception causes me to believe that this "feature" is a double-edged sword. On the one side, it adds to the whole "social networking" thing. Find friends, recognize friends, connect with friends.

On the other hand, it is a massive crowdsourced facial recognition system that is incredibly difficult to stay away from, even if you refuse to be a part of Facebook (IIRC people can tag you in a picture by typing in your name). It's a f*cking privacy nightmare.

But what do you have to hide, huh? *grin....sigh*

Re:Is it 1984, or am I a conspiracy theorist?

[ganjadude]

Anytime my name is tagged, i get a email that asked me if i want the info published to my friends or not. BEFORE my name is added. This goes for posts and photo tags. I find this to be a fair trade off.

Re:Is it 1984, or am I a conspiracy theorist?

[icebike]

While you can tag people who don't have accounts, they won't be auto-tagged (obviously) and there's no way to search for them unless it's your own album -- so the stuff you're talking about has been unchanged since photo tagging first came out years ago.

Such nonsense. That YOU can't search for some unknown face, doesn't mean some privileged few (perhaps with warrant in hand) can't search.

Re:Is it 1984, or am I a conspiracy theorist?

[CanHasDIY]

Such nonsense. That YOU can't search for some unknown face, doesn't mean some privileged few (perhaps with a National Security Letter in hand) can't search.

FTFY.

Warrants are sooo 2002.

Re:Is it 1984, or am I a conspiracy theorist?

[bmo]

Anytime my name is tagged, i get a email that asked me if i want the info published to my friends or not. BEFORE my name is added.

This. It's in your Facebook Privacy Settings, the ones that everyone who complains ignores.

How much of a false sense of security that is, is debatable. People have been posting pictures of themselves and friends publicly on the web since the days of Geocities and Angelfire (and before that, on small private and .edu hosts) with nary a .htaccess in sight. The lack of good search engines at the time provided a sort-of-quasi-obscurity in that stuff wasn't searchable but technology marches on.

Everything is crawlable now. Everything is indexable. If it's public, without .htaccess or even a robots.txt, then it's going to get crawled and indexed. Facebook is just a small corner of the "problem." If you don't want people seeing your stuff, don't post it. Tell your friends to not post pictures of you. That's the only real solution. If your friends have any sense of decency, they'll be polite and at least ask first (mine do).

But lastly, don't use your real name. This war on anonymity by Facebook, Google+ and other providers should be fought tooth and nail. Yes, it's in the TOS, but the TOS isn't there to protect you - it's there to protect the provider and the flow of money to the provider. Ignore the real name requirement. It's unenforceable - it's not like FB requires a photocopy of a valid ID.

--
BMO

Re:Is it 1984, or am I a conspiracy theorist?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

That YOU can't search for some unknown face, doesn't mean some privileged few (perhaps with warrant in hand) can't search.

This fact is important. This "opting out" on facebook is just like all the other web tracking "opt outs" - you don't opt out of being tracked and cataloged, you opt out of being reminded that you are being tracked and cataloged.

Re:Is it 1984, or am I a conspiracy theorist?

[sort uniq]

Not to blow this too far out of proportion, but you specifically mention that the information is published. I can't claim any knowledge as to how FB manages their data, but I find it a stretch to believe that they would delete this association in their databases. What's to keep them from turning these unpublished associations over to the government, advertising companies, or other undesirables?

Re:I don't get it

[Wookact]

If it screws up and pastes my name on someone that looks like me?

If I never gave permission for my photo be used for commercial purposes?

If I don't want my name plastered all over the Internet?

If I no longer use facebook and wish to have nothing to do with it anymore?

I do not get why you think you should have the right to share photos of me without my permission. Especially with Facebook.

Activists should be most concerned

[Midnight_Falcon]

If the FBI had access to Facebook's database during the days of COINTELPRO, it is doubtful the American Civil Rights movement would have ever occurred.

Facial recognition is an amazingly powerful tool for law enforcement when it comes to political adversaries -- imagine a scenario where local police and the FBI could just pop a photo into the special "Law Enforcement" console on Facebook, and find out who the person is, who their friends are, what their likes/dislikes are, what they order online (what kind of ads are targeted), etc.

It's also sad that most young activists these days are all over Facebook and have been giving it all their information since they turned 13 (or earlier if they just ignored that 13+ stuff), so by the time they become involved, the government has an easy way to find out literally everything about their personal lives. Just upload a picture of them snapped at some political rally, and voila!

The problem is Facebook is so addictive, I see such compulsive behavior clicking photos, and when you block facebook on networks, users downright have panic attacks.

Sounds like George Orwell may have been right: We love big brother.

Re:What is the problem

[CanHasDIY]

Because being outed as gay is a negative?

Depends.

Live in northern CA? Probably no big deal. However, here in the Bible Belt, being outed can, will, and has in the past, cause a person to lose everything.

And, of course, there's seemingly no end to the stories of gay teens being outed at school, then killing themselves due to the subsequent abuse.

Re:What is the problem

[idontgno]

Actually, the real money-maker would be extortion: "CreepyDude1234 just asked to identify you in a picture. What's it worth to you for him not to find you?"