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.
And since your friends and family keep telling you that "you're only being paranoid" and posting group photos anyway, you're screwed anyway.
Your only chance is to always wear a mask everywhere you go, but some countries have laws against that, including Canada.
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?
Love sees no species.
I don't follow you. I'm very private, keeping most of my life to myself. I have coworkers who see me all day every day and in some ways see me more than my own family. They know almost nothing about my private life though. I'm not anonymous but I am quite private.
I've never followed this logic that you have to be anonymous to be private. It just logically fails on every level. Why bother with encryption if you're anonymous? If you're not anonymous encryption keeps you private (when done correctly). Frankly anonymity appears to be a myth. It just does not seem to exist in reality.
The movement de jour will try to block access by others. The current movement would be the SJW retards, who would seek to block such a thing from being accessible to people they label as "racist" or "sexist" or "fat shamers" or people with "white privilege."
Or more likely: Middle Eastern style head coverings are about to become universal.
1) found my own church. ....
2) Commandment 1 - Thou shalt not expose your face in public.
Now I'm legit because covering my face is my religious belief.
On the bright side, it will be a great help to those of us who have difficulty remembering people's faces.
Now:
Person I Should Know: "Hi, Jason. How are you doing?"
Me: "Fine... um... you. How are you?"
Soon:
Person I Should Know: "Hi, Jason. How are you doing?"
FindFace On Google Glass: "This is John Smith. He works for XYZ Corp and last e-mailed you about the Sprockets project."
Me: "Fine, John. How's that Sprockets project going?"
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Or just leave both of them alone if they are both consenting adults. Just because I wouldn't be one or use one doesn't mean I need to go "exposing" those that do.
Never underestimate the ability of the morally superior to take exception with your behavior and decide what is best for you; until someone decides what they are doing is wrong and then comes the hypocrisy disguised as righteous indignation.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.