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Google Wins Dismissal of Suit Over Facial Recognition Software (bloomberg.com)
A lawsuit filed against Google by users who said the world's largest search engine violated their privacy by using facial recognition technology was dismissed by a judge on Saturday. From a report: U.S. District Judge Edmond E. Chang in Chicago cited a lack of "concrete injuries" to the plaintiffs. The suit, initially filed in March 2016, alleged Alphabet's Google collected and stored biometric data from photographs using facial recognition software, running afoul of a unique Illinois law against using a person's image without permission.
Man, the USA is a strange place to us Germans.
Even before US data protection laws, recording somebody without somebody's permission, and then publishing them, was always illegal. Yes, also in public.
There were/are, of course freedom of the press laws. So in some cases, they were in direct contradiction, and if somebody sued, a judge decided.
Note how it says "and then publishing them". You could still record them.
Because this whole thing was never about acting like you are in private when you are in public.
(Although courtesy dictates that you leave people alone, even in public. Like when a couple is kissing on a bench behind a bush in a public park, you don't go and stare at or record them.)
It was about the problem of making something that should be forgotten when people forget it, permanent for all eternity. ... While even law, on top of basic human decency, dictates, that everybody must have the chance to be forgiven, eventually. Hence prison sentences not being literally forever.
Because then, somebody can still hate you and harass you for something you did, twenty fucking years ago.
And because statistically you can calculate that there are about 5000 people on this planet, who have the will and the means to bloody murder you for something, whatever that something is.
Add those things together, and taking a photo of you, and uploading it online, knowing the above risks, would have to be considered an act of aiding in bloody murder.
(I would not say that, unless I’d have hard real-world statistics on that calculation above, but technically, using common sense, one would have to.)
This is exactly why we have a "right to be forgotten" law in the EU. And data protection laws.
Not that their implementation is good. Or written by people with a clue about the Internet and modern technology. I'm certainly no fan of the EU (nor nationalism/racism, for that matter).
But it's way better than dismissing the problems in their entirety.
This isn't true... for quite some time. I don't know why people keep bringing it up. It's not simply about public vs private. It more about an "expectation of privacy" as viewed by the common man. This is the way the Supreme Court has leaned and shot down tracking and going through people's trash without warrants. Yes, in general, being in a public place, one can't expect privacy and vise-verse in a private space.
If you are at a train station and go into a corner to talk softly on the phone.... you have an expectation of privacy in a public space that could be violated. If you have your jacket over your head in the park, someone can't follow you around for that second that your guard is down and snap a picture. There was a expectation of privacy that someone _intended_ to violate.
The right to privacy is defined under Article II of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as:
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Furthermore, libel, slander, unlawful search and seasure laws also apply regarding individual privacy rights and how Google chooses to give out the info of a person's image connected with any kind of identifying info.
Outside of direct privacy violations, other problems arise when data collected by Google is stolen or used by law enforcement/intelligence agencies which makes Google liable if it is the one who took otherwise anonymous info of a person's image and attached an ID to it which was later used. If the ID was accurate and ID theft occurs, Google willingly and actively facilitated that act. If the ID is incorrect and it identifies someone else and either party is part of a crime requiring them to be accurately ID'd, Google is on the hook for bearing false witness.