Slashdot Mirror
Face Recognition App Taking Russia By Storm May Bring End To Public Anonymity (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Anonymity in public could soon become a thing of the past. A service called FindFace allows users to photograph people in a crowd and work out their identities with 70% reliability. It works by comparing photographs to profile pictures on Vkontakte, a social network popular in Russia and the former Soviet Union, with more than 200 million accounts. In future, the designers imagine a world where people walking past you on the street could find your social network profile by sneaking a photograph of you, and shops, advertisers and the police could pick your face out of crowds and track you down via social networks. In the short time since the launch, FindFace has amassed 500,000 users and processed nearly 3m searches.The Newsweek wrote about this app last month. The publication reported on an abuse of the app in which porn stars and sex workers were targeted. Some wanted to use FindFace for the purpose of "outing" these sex workers to their families and social media contacts.
You are hosed, forever.
The publication reported on an abuse of the app in which porn stars and sex workers were targeted. Some wanted to use FindFace for the purpose of "outing" these sex workers to their families and social media contacts.
It would also be helpful and possibly more equitable to out the people who frequent the sex workers. In fact, maybe leave the sex workers alone since for the most part they are just earning an honest living, and out the people using them, who typically are betraying someone they have promised to be faithful to.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
If there is to be a panopticon, the only sensible next step is to make sure everybody has access, not just government.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
With FindFace and the similar services that are sure to follow in its footsteps, almost everybody will be able to identify almost anybody else in a few seconds. This heralds the end of privacy as we know it. Even widespread video cameras and NSA communications monitoring don't do as much damage to privacy as these services will, because the public at large doesn't have access to the video footage and the data that the NSA and other TLA's gather.
I'm afraid privacy will soon be officially a thing of the past. At least I can take comfort in the fact that I have been diligent about not having my picture appear on the Web - identifying me using a FindFace-like service would probably be quite difficult. Until hackers break into the Ministry of Transportation and steal my driver's licence photo, that is... As for all those people who are promiscuous users of Facebook and the like, I'm sure they don't care about this any more than the lemmings a few ranks back from the edge of the cliff care about what's coming up shortly. Good luck to us all in this brave new world.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Mod parent up.
For human-vs-human, I agree you can look at others but others can look at you too. You can find the name of a pretty girl and try to harass her, but then she can also report your name to the police.
Things change however when it is human-vs-non human, like companies, state or police. Except for the police, they could already do it for years.
With the ability of technology to do these kinds of things, society is going to be changing. But which direction will it go?
Will we become a more repressed society, afraid to engage in activity that other people don't approve of? A society where we share as little as possible with others out of fear?
Or will society become "anything goes," where people accept that everyone has a past that may not be pretty, and people may engage in activities that we may not appreciate? After all, that camera could be pointed towards us - who are we to judge?
I imagine it will be both.
People who need to maintain their "reputation" will need to be even more self-censoring than they were before. This will create a world(and it is already going this way) where anything you say, or do, any way you react to something, body language, facial expression, what videos you watch, books you read, music you listen to, things you post, etc will be recorded, analyzed and codified. A Police State that couldn't have been dreamed of by Orwell.
Then again, there will be those with the need for a "streecred" type of reputation will do the opposite, and perpetuate their badassness...
Eventually, there will be a corporate(Facebook) way of ranking people, which will impact us all in ways we don't even fathom.
Those who don't need to maintain their "reputation" won't need to worry about it, either because they will have absolutely no financial stake in anything(where most people will end up) or they will be so wealthy that it won't matter.
In some aspects of how human society is going, it reminds me of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", where to hide among the "converted" humans(Social Media-ized), non-converted humans had to hide their humanness.
We are also seeing how the politicization and polarization in the First World is creating a more "us vs them" reality, and we also see that geographically, people of the same class/race/political view are "self balkanizing", meaning different groups don't mingle as much anymore, never see each other, live in separated areas, etc;
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
You're assuming that people aren't hypocrites who will look down on other people for doing the same things that they do. Just one look at the number of rabidly homophobic politicians and religious leaders who turned out to be having gay sex on the side should be more than enough to prove that assumption is wildly wrong.
Or people will learn to self-moderate their online interactions the same way they self-moderate public face-to-face interactions. When I post something online, I think "Would I say this to a room filled with my wife, parents, friends, relatives, boss, co-workers, and (depending on the topic) my children?" If the answer is "No", I don't post it. If the answer is "yes", I go ahead and post it. Too many people will post a ten paragraph screed against their coworkers on Facebook and then act surprised when their boss finds it.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
"Yet another reason NOT to be on Facebook".
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The biggest issue is probably longevity. Nothing gets deleted, and what's ok today is hounded tomorrow.
Anonymity is the refuge of those of us who are otherwise powerless. Once it is gone, the Man can target anyone.