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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.
Why bother? If you don't like local Wal-Mart's policy which considers entering the store to be a sign of consent, what are you going to do - drive to the next town and be faced with the same bullshit?
Consent can only exist between beings of at least roughly equal power. That is the justification for statutory rape laws, for example. Corporate America demanding you to "consent" to your shafting simply adds another layer of perversion and humiliation to an already awful situation. Which, of course, is the point: traumatized, broken people are easy to control, especially once they internalize the abuse heaped on them.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
What state doesn't store a digitized copy of the faces of everyone with a driver's license? The minute they put photos on IDs this one was lost. I can't believe the FBI doesn't have access to every single drivers license photo on file...
Whereas now they don't give grocery receipt coupons to unprofitable bargain hunters that come in just for the sales ( they know who you are! ) you'll start seeing these people recognized by face and shown loud obnoxious ads for herpes medication and depends to keep em out of the store.
...
My stupid sister and an equally stupid cousin uploaded their address book to Farcebook.
Then I got threatening mail from said Facebook imploring me to join 'my friends' on their website, a cold day in hell indeed!
So now after a few idiots have tagged me on their stupid 'Social' pages I'll be recognisable for every privacy invading company in the world.
Al I can do is waiting for a EU court to cut this crap as the US side won't do anything for us 'The People'.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Are Facebook tagging people who don't have Facebook accounts if their face is in a photo?
Seems like a breach of the data protection act - keeping details (face, place, time+date, more(?)) on a person who has not agreed to their T's & C's.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
And that's where marketing fails. People only have so much attention to spend. Drowning them in marketing reduces it to static noise.
Think for a moment. Think of the movie you watched last night. Now tell me the name of a single product you saw the ads for. If you don't watch TV, take the billboards on your way to work.
We get so flooded with ads that we don't recognize them anymore. The spam filter in our brain works. We notice them as a waste of space (billboards) and time (tv ads), but the networks could as well broadcast static and the billboards could as well be blank, they simply don't work anymore. We're saturated. It has reached the level where we simply don't register it anymore except as a nuisance. But we don't even tie that nuisance to a brand or product anymore, it's just "ads".
And this is where advertising fails.
And targeted ads won't change that. So you tell me about a product that I'd want, but you do it in the same way that all the other ads I already mentally filter do. I do not register that anymore. Your ad will be part of the noise. The ad industry bothered us enough that we filter their messages on principle. Brand recognition is by no stretch as deeply ingrained in people as marketeers want to think. And people don't obsess about a brand (ok, unless it's Apple or something else that managed to tack a lifestyle package to its primary use). More likely than not, they don't give a shit. Do you care if the detergent you use is Wisk, Ariel, Persil or Tide? Or do you simply take whatever is on sale when you simply have to buy a new box 'cause the old one is empty?
I mean, for real, dear marketeers, do you think we have any semblance of an emotional attachment to the brand of shoe polish we use?
The ad industry is allegedly a creative one. But it fails at exactly that. It fails at what's most important about advertising: Being noticed. Ads vanish into the background noise of getting a new coke or taking a dump. They are flipped over in the daily newspaper and ignored on billboards.
You fail to get noticed, advertisers!
And no, slapping them in our face with popups won't change that. At least not for long. What it will accomplish is to annoy us for the time being 'til we automated reaching up to the close button. Without even registering whatever blocked our view.
Your job, advertisers, is to turn from a nuisance into information. You have to turn from something people HATE to something people WANT. Once you manage that, we can talk about you being successful again. And targeted ads can do that.
If, and only if, you implement it sensibly. But it will be an uphill battle for you. You have to undo about a century of bad advertising that taught us how to ignore you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.