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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.
In meatspace nobody recognizes Rorschach.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The stores which own the legislatures of both Illinois and Texas should simply order them to change the laws.
You can buy all of the government some of the time, and some of the government all of the time, but . . . it takes a lot of money to buy all of the government, all of the time. So that option is only available to very large companies.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
A bit longer, the best you can hope for. Acknowledging the fact that we will eventually lose this one.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
We need some digital privacy laws for the internet. Perhaps - the right not to be named in a public photo/video on the internet - or even have your face shown without express, written permission.
This rule would only apply to the internet, not TV or print.
In addition, real financial penalties of $1,000 could apply.
This would among other things, stop things like people posting embarrassing youtube videos of other people.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Everyone's gonna have it in their vr goggles used to augment and overlay reality in 10 years anyway. You're all living in a fantasy world. Government will limit it to itself, or try to, and they're the ones with serious abuse potential as their panopticon keeps a live track database of all citizens out in public.
Again, I am less concerned if Facebook wants to know if I'm more interested in Pampers or Depends than of government tracking...which history shows will be abused by those in power to maintain their power.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
rolling out systems to "pre-identify" shoplifters
// if (CustomerColor != WHITE) {ShopliftingAlert == TRUE} // XXX: uncomment *ONLY* for demo!
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
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.
...
Even so, laws can mitigate some of the effects. Being tagged in photos and having a search engine easily bring up embarrassing pictures of you at a drunken dorm blowout is the future, and laws can do little about that. A shopkeeper being informed by his CCTV cam that you walk by his store every day, so he can throw some specific ads your way, can probably not be prevented either. But at least we can stop such sensitive data to be shared and processed en masse by both corporations and governments alike, by outlawing the practise. And of course that won't stop it completely, but at least we'll have something of a stick to hit transgressors with.
Well, a man can dream... But the fact that such undesirable practises are easy to do and hard to police doesn't mean that we shouldn't still have those laws in place.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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."
I cringe at the thought. This here illustrates pretty well what it would be like.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
I can't name a single product. Now if you don't mind I need to run down to Burger King and get a Whopper made my way. Then I need to call Geico to see if 15 minutes will save me 15% or more. For some strange reason I also have an itch to look at a new car today.