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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 stick it to the man!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Or more likely: Middle Eastern style head coverings are about to become universal.
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.
Something shady like visiting a bar, going to a drunken dorm blowout, picking up some (legal) weed or (legal) porn, visiting the "wrong" political rally, and so on. It's one thing if you bump into a colleague in the dodgy rubber fetish section at the videostore, it's quite another if your current and future friends, family, employers, interested law enforcement officers can place you there until the end of time.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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.
Stay in your mother's basement -- it's the only way to be sure.
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.