Face Recognition Tech Pushes Legal Boundaries

An anonymous reader writes: As face recognition software becomes more capable, companies and governments are coming up with new ways to use it. Microsoft has already patented a Minority Report-style personalized billboard, and loss prevention departments in big stores are rolling out systems to "pre-identify" shoplifters. But this rush to implement the technology runs afoul of privacy laws in at least two U.S. states: Illinois and Texas forbid the use of face recognition software without "informed consent" from the target. Facebook is the target of a recent lawsuit in Illinois over this exact issue; it's likely to test the strength of such a law. "Facebook and Google use facial recognition to detect when a user appears in a photograph and to suggest that he or she be tagged. Facebook calls this "Tag Suggestions" ... With the boom in personalized advertising technology, a facial recognition database of its users is likely very, very valuable to Facebook. ... Eager to extract that value, Facebook signed users up by default when it introduced Tag Suggestions in 2011. This meant that Facebook calculated faceprints for every user who didn't take the steps to opt out." If Facebook loses and citizens start pushing for similar laws in other states, it could keep our activities in public relatively anonymous for a bit longer.

Comments

Re:Problem is other people

[gsslay]

Upload to Facebook a whole heap of random pictures of people (actors, the famous etc) or all kinds and tag the lot as yourself. Make yourself appear to be a mashup of every possible gender/race/age and physical appearance. So any photos of yourself that do get tagged are drowned in a pool of misinformation.

Re:Scary indeed

[Jason Levine]

Scary "TERRORISM!" scenario aside, you don't have an expectation of privacy when you walk down the street. You can't tell someone that he can't take a photo of you walking down the street (or run that photo through a facial recognition algorithm) because it violates your privacy. Now, if you have facial recognition being forced on you in your own house, that might be an issue.