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Through a Face Scanner Darkly

Posted by samzenpus on from the I-know-you dept.

An anonymous reader writes in with a story that raises the issue of how public anonymity is quickly disappearing thanks to facial recognition technology. "NameTag, an app built for Google Glass by a company called FacialNetwork.com, offers a face scanner for encounters with strangers. You see somebody on the sidewalk and, slipping on your high-tech spectacles, select the app. Snap a photo of a passerby, then wait a minute as the image is sent up to the company's database and a match is hunted down. The results load in front of your left eye, a selection of personal details that might include someone's name, occupation, Facebook and/or Twitter profile, and, conveniently, whether there's a corresponding entry in the national sex-offender registry."

26 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What the fuck does that title mean? by mbone · · Score: 5, Informative

    Phillip K. Dick, "A Scanner Darkly," 1977. One of the main plot points is that the protagonist, a police informant, has to keep his true identity a secret from everyone, including his police handlers.

  2. I do not look forward to this. by feufeu · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I want to be able to meet someone and get to know him/her by actually talking to him/her.

    And no, I don't give a fuck about sex offender list crazyness.

    I do not want *anybody* to tell me who i should be afraid of or not.

    1. Re:I do not look forward to this. by feufeu · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Nothing, for now.

      Everyone wearing stupid Google glasses, in a dystopian future.

      I hope I am not the only one here who would have an awkward feeling if I knew that someone I meet just did at least the equivalent of a Google search on me before we even talk.

    2. Re:I do not look forward to this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I work with a registered sex-offender. The reason why this guy works for us is because he was grandfathered in before the company started doing background checks, and we don't see a reason to let him go since he is in compliance with the law and does his job really well.

      You can look him up and see his face and everything, again, he's fully compliant. Most importantly, though, we don't hold his past against him because his offense was something like "Intent of Sexual Assault," which is something that any cheating or otherwise regretful whore could have fabricated after leading a man on while in a drunken stupor before her boyfriend found out and gave her an ultimatum.

      Of course, the whole registry thing is simply to convince suburban housewives that evil is always lurking around the corner, and that they should be perpetually afraid of events with little statistical significance. But we're not talking about terrorism, this time.

      -- Ethanol-fueled

    3. Re:I do not look forward to this. by sumdumass · · Score: 4, Informative

      Of course, the whole registry thing is simply to convince suburban housewives that evil is always lurking around the corner, and that they should be perpetually afraid of events with little statistical significance. But we're not talking about terrorism, this time.

      I hate to say this but a lot of people on the registered offender lists might be innocent of what you or I would consider a sexual offense. I know of a person who stopped to take a piss on the way walking home from a bar and because it was close to a school (which was empty because it was 3 am), he had to fight charges that would have put him on the list. I think it cost him around $25k in lawyers and fighting the charges in order to not be on the list. I know of another, an 18 year old kid who was dating some chick in his math class (high school). They dated since he was 16 but she was more then 2 years difference in age so when he turned 18, a concerned neighbor turned them in and he went up on statutory gross sexual imposition charges which definitely put him on the list. The neighbor, who after discussing ways to please a man with this 15 year old girl, was appalled to find out her boyfriend of 2 years was 18 years old now and she wouldn't be 16 for another 3 months so she promptly reported the situation to children's protective services. He was a good kid and everyone who knew them went in as character references during the trial but it didn't seem to matter as it was a statutory thing and the judge's hands were tied (so he said).

      They have changed the law a bit in the years since then, but if it happened that easily, I'm sure there are more people wearing the label that do not deserve it. There are likely a lot of people who do deserve it, but I'm not sure the classifications are rational enough to be concerned over someone who has to register.

    4. Re:I do not look forward to this. by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "You don't have to justify your non-hate of a convicted sex-offender by downplaying their guilt. It's perfectly acceptable to say that he committed a crime, and has changed his life, and is now a law-abiding citizen."

      Why don't YOU accept the fact that some things that get people on sex-offender registries are inherently ridiculous, and therefore a travesty of justice?

      Did you know that in some states, going out behind the tavern and peeing in the bushes because the bathroom is full can get you put on a sex-offender registry for life?

      The laws are fucking ridiculous and need to change. Sure, some people are guilty of horrendous crimes. But taking people who have committed a pretty damned trivial offense, and lumping them together for life with child rapists, is at least as offensive as those child rapists.

      Look up the actual laws. Get a clue.

    5. Re:I do not look forward to this. by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Informative

      In some states you don't even have to be near a school. And there are other things that can get you on the list.

      For example: you live in a state where the age of consent is 16, but you live near the border with a state where it is 18. (Yes, it is 16 in some states and in others lower still.) You go across the border on a weekend to go boating, or skiing, or something... forgetting where you are, you get caught by somebody in an intimate situation.

      You guessed it... a lifetime on an offender registry for doing something that would have been perfectly legal just a mile away.

    6. Re:I do not look forward to this. by weilawei · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Do the rest of humanity a favor and stop asking people to make assumptions, especially FUD assumptions. The parent has experience with this person above--why should they change their opinion of their ability and performance in the workplace?

      More importantly, the poster DID NOT say they "choose to believe that this particular person was never a criminal" but rather that the charge is so common as to be virtually useless for assignment of actual guilt, without further information. To take ANY side AT ALL, either for or against, without further evidence beyond the name of the charge and the inclusion on the sex offendor registry, is to make an assumption. The parent, presumably, was not present at the trial, and so would not have been exposed to that information.

      DO NOT interpret this as a defense of anyone in particular. This is a defense of the idea that you should not make assumptions about a person based on incomplete evidence. Otherwise, you're lumping in high school kids dating each other with violent rapists and middle aged people molesting children.

    7. Re:I do not look forward to this. by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "You seem just as adamant that this person you don't know at all is most likely guilty."

      And this is a very good illustratration of one of the BIG problems with such registries: no matter how trivial the crime, people will assume (A) that you're guilty, and (B) that you are a child rapist, even if you were only convicted of a trivial offense.

      Studies have shown that people almost never inquire why someone is on a registry. Instead they just assume the worst.

      And it also shows why a national registry is an outrageously BAD IDEA. A person who was an offender in one state would face a lifetime stigma, even in other states where the "offending" activity was perfectly legal.

    8. Re:I do not look forward to this. by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 5, Informative

      You guessed it... a lifetime on an offender registry for doing something that would have been perfectly legal just a mile away.

      It's even worse than that. From a state where the age of consent is higher, go to one where it's lower for a weekend, perform an act that would have been legal in that state if you were a resident, go home and get arrested for the "crime" of transporting a minor across state lines for the purpose of sex.

      People like nothing better than to get outraged about sex.

    9. Re:I do not look forward to this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      0) He served his time.
      1) He may not even have committed the crime.
      2) Whether or not he did or not, he served his time. See 0)

      If that's not enough why not:
      a) execute them
      b) imprison them for life
      c) once they have served their time, give them the option of living in pleasant "sex offender" reservations where their legal needs will be provided for and they can live comfortably for the rest of their life, where they don't have to be amongst all those people that don't want to be with them.

      Otherwise what would you have these excriminals do? Forever be unable to easily get a job or house? After all there are calls for more women in XYZ fields, so how many decent jobs can he get that won't have women especially in this climate?

      Sexual offender registries are a life sentence.

  3. fake data by manu0601 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Perhaps we should start posting fake profiles with random data to make the thing unusable?

  4. Re:What the fuck does that title mean? by femtobyte · · Score: 5, Informative

    And the book title is itself a biblical reference to 1 Corinthians 13:12, "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." (King James Version) --- but I doubt the summary titler was alluding quite that far back.

  5. I'm glad I'm not an atractive woman. by The+Optimizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    because no one would misuse this tech to act creepy.

    True story:

    Back around 1989 I was maintaining a minicomputer system for a small chain of Auto Body Shops near Ft. Worth Texas. I got to know a lot about how the business works and made friends with some of the VERY blue collar guys who sanded, welded, painted and whatnot.

    At that time the body shop had dedicated terminal that could dial up the Texas DMV database and retrieve the registration info for a given license plate. On at least two separate occasions I observed one of the shop guys using the terminal to get the name and address of a car they observed that was driven by an attractive woman. Nothing creepy or potentially dangerous there? Yeah.

    Maybe we should study CCTV operators in England to make sure that attractive women, or any other category of people, aren't being watched more closely than everyone else.

    1. Re:I'm glad I'm not an atractive woman. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Maybe we should update our privacy laws and stop allowing companies and the government to store all this information about us in shitty databases to begin with.

    2. Re:I'm glad I'm not an atractive woman. by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 5, Informative

      Maybe we should update our privacy laws and stop allowing companies and the government to store all this information about us in shitty databases to begin with.

      This.

      When even the cops use these databases on on other cops you know the only solution is to stop building the databases in the first place.

      Stalking pretty girls makes for a good visceral story, but the larger problem is one of political repression -- essentially using these databases to make it harder for political upstarts to instigate change, basically co-opting democracy.

      BTW, that same database the cops used to stalk other cops? Also used to stalk political candidates.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  6. Great.. by epyT-R · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Great, anther toy encouraging society to regress back to adolescent behavior...with much higher stakes.

  7. Cultural literacy by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Informative

    E.D. Hirsch coined the term "cultural literacy" to describe aspects of culture which have meaning that goes beyond the basic words.

    An example from his book is the phrase "there is a tide".

    Those four words carried not only a lot of complex information, but also the persuasive force of a proverb. In addition to the basic practical meaning, "act now!" what came across was a lot of implicit reasons why immediate action was important.

    For some of my younger readers who may not recognize the allusion, the passage from Julius Caesar is:

            There is a tide in the affairs of men
            Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune;
            Omitted, all the voyage of their life
            Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
            On such a full sea are we now afloat,
            And we must take the current when it serves,
            Or lose our ventures.

    The phrase "A Scanner Darkly" was the title of a book (and movie) by Phillip K. Dick. It's part of the cultural literacy of science fiction, something that nerds might recognize. As in Hirsch's example, a few words convey a great deal of complex information.

    The story title comes from the bible, "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.", which artfully describes a system that identifies and footnotes faces seen through Google glass.

    Cultural literacy references come into and go out of style, and Phillip K. Dick may be a bit dated for today's audience.

    If you're interested, there are a few online "Cultural Literacy" tests, such as this one.

  8. Re:Conflicted on this by epyT-R · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The inconvenience of forgetting someone's name is far far less problematic than the psychological and social damage pervasive surveillance does to society. I don't see how you can be conflicted at all..

  9. 2 things by memnock · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1. Fuck you very much, facialnetwork.com and any other company that wants to deanonymize everyone.

    2. Why the sex offender registry for starters? Is facialnetwork.com trying to scare everyone into thinking that the country is overrun by sex offenders? You can piss in an alley (not that that's generally a pleasant thing) and end up on a list with people who have committed violent sexual assaults. To me there is a huge gap in the moral turpitude between the two. The latter of the two examples is probably someone to be weary of, but I don't know if the former is necessarily someone any worse than someone who uses illegal drugs.

    --
    "To stop the terrorists."
    1. Re:2 things by gnoshi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, when there are 17.4 million users of a drug in the US alone eventually one of them will be a crazed cannibal.
      In 2012 there was that New York cop charged with plotting to murder and eat women. There are only about 795,000 police in the US so perhaps being a cop is a stronger indicator of a potential cannibal than cannabis use.

  10. Re:Conflicted on this by Anachragnome · · Score: 5, Informative

    "...and then having to dig through your memory to try to remember who they are (failing miserably) while acting like you know exactly who they are."

    I'd rather trust my own memory then out-source it.

    For fuck sake people, are you listening to yourselves? This is a corporation literally trying to turn people into mobile data gathering devices. You are either deluding yourself about your own level of intelligence, or suffer from a serious lack of morality, if you think any of this is acceptable. Every person on this planet values privacy to some degree--What, exactly, do we really get in exchange for the loss of this privacy? Knowledge we could get by simply asking that person?

    THINK, PEOPLE. If history is any sort of an indicator, any rights we sell today, our children must buy back with blood.

  11. Re:Conflicted on this by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yeah, I could really use this as a prosthetic.

    I can't remember faces, and I have a lot of trouble recognizing them. It's not full-blown prosopagnosia, but it's a real problem in daily life -- for example, if I run into a familiar co-worker at a grocery store, I'm likely not to recognize them, and I might come across as cold or distant. I compensated by being friendly to everyone, which earned me a reputation for being nice, if a bit spacy. And I can recognize my family, even "picture" them in my mind -- but I couldn't tell you what shape my wife's nose or ears are. Sketching people is right out.

    I'd love to have heads-up subtitles on people, not to be creepy, just to put me on even footing with the rest of the world. If the price is that I have to feed knowledge of who I'm seeing to the Overmind, though, I'm not sure I'd strike the bargain.

  12. Re:It's coming, whether Google likes it or not. by Swampash · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Prediction: "smart" masks that not only obscure your face but also photorealistically display the face of some other random person.

  13. Re:Do Not Want by weilawei · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Whoosh. When you beat THEM up, and THEY whine, the government goes after YOU, not THEM. That's why you don't martyr them. You think the government is against the idea of people walking around with these all the time, sending data over networks they can tap? It's one of the best presents they could've asked for, and you want to take it away? Good luck not going to jail...

  14. Re:Angry Birds an intentional distraction. by Anachragnome · · Score: 4, Informative

    Spiegal Online apparently did a full release of images from each of the two document leaks--far more complete than the Wikipedia pages.

    Scroll down for the images and "straight from the horse's mouth" descriptions of capabilities.

    http://leaksource.wordpress.co...

    Example---"NIGHTSTAND: Portable system that wirelessly installs Microsoft Windows exploits from a distance of up to eight miles" (I have a feeling it's been updated for Win7/8 by now)

    http://leaksource.files.wordpr...

    And....the guys developing and putting to use these capabilities.

    http://leaksource.wordpress.co...

    Make sure to check out the links at the bottom of that last page.