Germany Says Facebook's Facial Recognition Is Illegal 278
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the pictures-of-you dept.
from the pictures-of-you dept.
fysdt writes "Although we think it's generally a pretty nifty feature, valid concerns over the misuse of Facebook's auto-recognition tagging have lead Germany to ban it entirely. That's right — Facebook in its current state is now illegal. The German government, which possesses perhaps the world's most adamant privacy laws as a result of postwar abuse, considers Facebook's facial recognition a violation of 'the right to anonymity.'"
GO GERMANS (Score:5, Funny)
Re:GO GERMANS (Score:4, Informative)
It should be noted that German investigators were also the ones who caused Google to admit their four years of Street View data-snooping.
Re:GO GERMANS (Score:5, Informative)
It should be noted how that works. In Germany every institution which processes personal data has to have a "Datenschutzbeauftragter" (Personal privacy protection responsible), ans this since the early 90s (as far as i remember). And there are one of these for each of the Countries in Germany.
As fas as i understand the west German strong movement and awareness for the issue arose in 1987 census, which caused a lot of work for the courts and polarized the population against government data collection. Before that the "Rasterfahndung" (a sieving of registration office and other data to find terrorism suspects) in the 1970s deepened the split between the different political views in Germany (IMHO prolonging the support for the terroristic "red army fraction" in the population). About former East Germany it can only be said that people who were spied upon all the time and having disadvantaged in life if saying privately the wrong thing may not feel very well about being tracked.
Last but not least one of the first large-scale usage of automated population databases (on Hollerith puchcards) in Germany was the organization of the Holocaust.
All these are good reasons that Germany should be extra-careful about data collections. And germans should be, too, but every time i stand in the shop at the cashier is am asked if i use a customer point card (which then would probably allow the company behind to correlate my buying of underwear with the books i buy).
I for my part can only say that i am lucky that i forbid even friends to put photos of me to an uncontrolled space in the Internet. There is only a
Re: (Score:3)
To add to that, the German Supreme Court's ("Bundesverfassungsgericht", abr. "BVerG") ruling on the 1987 census establishet a new constitutional right for German citiziens: Informational Self-Determination ("Informationelle Selbstbestimmung"). It basically says: You - and only you - have got the rig
Re:GO GERMANS (Score:4, Informative)
Countries in Germany, eh? Which ones would those be exactly?
Parent almost certainly means the states of the federal republic (Länder). The word "Land" in German can translate as "country" or "state".
Re: (Score:3)
Check your Wikipedia. It knows this stuff.
Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringia.
These are the German federal states, often called "länder", which literally translates to "countries", though "states" would probably be less confusing to Americans.
Re:GO GERMANS (Score:4, Insightful)
English-speaking folks learned of the existence of Bavaria when it was called Bavaria or something phonetically similar. Baden-Württemberg was formed after WWII so it was never called something else. Saxony-Anhalt is an interesting case. Saxony is derived from the old Latin name Saxonia, while Anhalt is not old enough to have a Latin name. When Saxony-Anhalt was created after WWII with the German name Sachsen-Anhalt, English speakers used the existing English name of Saxony but the Anhalt part wasn't translated.
For the same reason, Germans are called Germans in English while modern-day Germans using the same word (Germannen) would be talking about members of the Germanic tribes from two thousand years ago. The German name for modern-day Germans (Deutsche) is only a few hundred years old; at the time people started using it to refer to what ended up to be Germany (Deutschland), English already had a name for the people living in the general direction of where Germany is located.
Re:GO GERMANS (Score:5, Interesting)
Well the problem is simple. If facebook offers such a service then it falls under the laws existing in Germany. If they offer the service to identify me personally against their database on photos which other people upload then they need my permission to do so.
The problem is that as long as facebook does not require any valid identification to get an account there, there is no way that would prevent the following: somebody uploads a photo of mine as his account photo and then asks facebook to look for him (that is, me) and then he or she can easily find out what i am doing even if i never touched anything there or my name is not mentioned. Very practical if you are an employer (applications in Germany still contain your photo).....
Re: (Score:3)
He called privacy a "misconception", he's obviously out of his mind. He also is probably a tea-partier/conservative who thinks as long as he doesn't do anything wrong --and he never does anything wrong-- he has nothing to hide. He is also a moron who doesn't understand such phenomena as self-censorship, groupthink, pluralistic ignorance or chilling effects. Basically he believes that everybody must have the mentality of a social activist from the cradle. He also disagrees in principle with such legal concep
Re:GO GERMANS (Score:4, Insightful)
Your post is full of assertions and half-truths. Of course it's technically possible to collect (face,name) pairs, but whether it's economically viable is hardly clear and is not a fixed proposition. It might be viable one day (because it's legal and/or people want it) and non-viable the other (because it's illegal and/or people don't want it anymore, for whatever reason). You're giving up the fight without a struggle, before it's even really started yet.
And, regardless, not everything that's technically and economically viable gets done, or if done, amounts to anything of importance. Collecting face data was being done before Facebook (or other big names) were doing it, but nobody cared, because it's only a big deal if somebody like Facebook with its insane network effects is backing it.
Calling the exchange of your data for access of other peoples data a fair trade is arbitrary: you can argue that it's the price to pay right now, but there's nothing inherently fair about it. There's nothing inherently fair about paying 1 EUR for organic milk, either, but at least that's a price established in a well-known and relatively transparent process, with non-surprising consequences for both sides.
Oh yeah and then that hogwash on getting rid of privacy for great justice and fighting oppression. I'm sure knowing your peers masturbatory habits will be very useful when someone shoves a gun in your face. Drivel.
Re: (Score:3)
GameboyRMH Likes Germany's privacy laws.
My right of notbeingrecognized is being recognized (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally someone recognizes the right of "not being recognized without consent".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Finally someone recognizes the right of "not being recognized without consent".
Precisely, and that's the problem.
If Facebook's feature is illegal, so is any and all other form of random recognition. If you meet someone by chance on the street, you are not allowed to recognize this person. Not even in your mind. Well, unless you get approval in advance. But in order to do that you have to recognize and initiate contact, and you're not allowed to recognize without prior consent...
Am I the only one to think that the law in its interpretation in relation to Facebook is stupid? - because u
Re: (Score:2)
It's not so much the recognition itself it's the fact that FB stores that information and let's others, who do not know you, "recognise" you.
Re: (Score:3)
Are you arguing that computers should have the same rights as people?
Re:My right of notbeingrecognized is being recogni (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone playing the race card has lost the argument already before opening his mouth.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Race card? I was always under the impression that being Jewish was a religion, not a "race".
As with most things, it's very easy to make up your mind if you choose to ignore the last hundred years of debate and scholarship on the topic.
Re: (Score:2)
AFAIK, it's pretty much both. It's one of the few religions that don't go out and try to 'spread the faith'. I'm no expert on religion, but IIRC there are even a few Jews who take it as far as not considering anyone a Jew who didn't have a Jewish mother, no matter whether he converted or otherwise tried to join the club.
Re:My right of notbeingrecognized is being recogni (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah thats one of the big sticking points of difference between Orthodox and Liberal judaism is that you can convert in liberal judaism fairly easy whereas its an extremely complicated process (possibly not even possible) in orthodox judaism.
Its also been a big bone of contention in israel as to whether recognising converts .... well lets not go there, I detest that a modern western country still hasn't understood that the minute a government takes religion into account for citizenship your living in an undeclared theocracy. Alas.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's both. There are large number of Jewish people who identify as "cultural Jew" but not "religious Jew", i.e. they're from a Jewish parentage but they're not active within the Jewish religion; they will celebrate passover, chanukah, etc with their families - because they're a cultural as well as religious practice - but you'll rarely find them in a synagogue.
Re: (Score:2)
In theory that's the way it should be. However, this is Germany. Somebody just has to vaguely imply "anti-semitism" to win an argument. We have very influential Jewish organisations that don't get tired to remember us of WW2 and cry anti-semitism as soon as somebody criticises Israel or somebody who is Jewish.
Re: (Score:2)
I realise that casual racism is compulsory on the Internet, but it's possible that some race-based arguments are correct. Every criticism of Israel is not anti-semitic, but every large database system with the ability to identify and catalogue humans certainly has the potential for abuse.
To stop this abuse requires a multi-pronged attack, one avenue being to prevent the system being created in the first place. Arguments that any tool is OK to build and deploy as long as it's used properly are naive and narr
Re: (Score:3)
Re:My right of notbeingrecognized is being recogni (Score:5, Insightful)
yup, this is Germany.
Once you realise the first time there was computerised cataloging of individuals, it was used to divvy them up into those who will be sent to the gas chamber and those who would be good blue-eyed blonds. You can understand why this is a big deal and why the law is set as it is. Even facebook doesn't get an opt-out for this.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure he was joking. :)
Re: (Score:3)
You have the right not to introduce yourself, resulting in a situation where people may recognize your face, but do not know your name.
Facebook's face recognition removes that right, and even removes the burden that someone has to ask someone else about your name.
-- You have nothing to hide? Don't come crying to me when all your personal data is available on the internet for everyone to see.
Re: (Score:3)
Wait, so people you used to know (maybe from school or something) have to ask your permission to recognize you if they should bump into you at the mall?
Hey, I've gone to great lengths not to be recognized by people I knew when I was in high school. I've put on about 75 lbs, lost all my hair (except for my goatee, which is very grey), moved all the way across the country, walk with a discernible limb and I've completely lost my youthful, carefree attitude, sense of adventure, 'to each his own' philosophy and sense of humor. In fact the only thing about me that hasn't changed is my taste in music and addiction to enchiladas. I'm pretty sure they'll need more
Just the facial recognition component? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole damn site is a privacy violation. I don't even use FB and I know that there are photos of me floating around on there, tagged by my so-called "friends." Short of being a hermit, I have no way to stop people from uploading data that identifies me to a site that makes money by exploiting that knowledge to sell shit.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Tags not linked to an account cannot be searched. They don't link to anything. You can't even see all the photos in an album with the same unlinked tag. It hardly identifies you, because as far as I can tell, they don't even try to assume unlinked tags are related to each other in any way, even if the text is the same. I've seen worse affronts to privacy in my life.
Totally wrong. (Score:3, Interesting)
Facebook is a data-mining and advertising company. They can and will sell all that information any time they feel like it.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm sorry, but I whole heartedly disagree.
You don't use Facebook because you see it as a privacy violation. That's perfectly fine, and I'll respect you for that.
What I do disagree with is the "my so-called 'friends'" comment. If they snagged a photo of you, they probably did so because you interacted with them. At that point, what you do is public knowledge. The degree to which it is public depends upon the context and your friends. If they snapped a photo of you while you were walking down the street,
Re:Just the facial recognition component? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they snapped a photo of you while you were walking down the street, deal with it because that is a public space and anyone could have done that.
The problem here is how people will deal with it:
a) The native American who doesn't want their soul stolen.
b) The wanna-be fashion diva who claims you didn't get their release, and you are stealing their IP, livelihood, etc.
c) Or the guy who just wants to kick your ass because he doesn't want photos around that he didn't consent.
People in general have a reasonable expectation of privacy everywhere they go despite what all of the social media douchebags think. When you click that photo, you best be sure you know how to defend yourself, because you do not know how people are going to react.
Re: (Score:2)
You have no expectation privacy walking down a street in the UK...
Re: (Score:3)
Odd. Most European laws explicitly state that you may expect to have privacy. Pretty much wherever you go. Doesn't stop the governments from using phone records to track you, but I guess they prefer to retain this right exclusively.
Re: (Score:2)
Says who? There's plenty of CCTV cameras around.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, and unless they're owned by some part of the government they better watch out not to look at public ground. I remember a case where someone was court ordered to take his off because it showed a few pixels of a sidewalk. Personally, I don't consider my shoes that much a privacy issue, but law's law and private owned CCTV cams are not allowed to record public areas.
A similar reason was used to shut down Google's streetview in Germany and other countries in Europe, btw.
Re: (Score:2)
Odd. Most European laws explicitly state that you may expect to have privacy. Pretty much wherever you go.
If you live in the UK, that is not true - you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your own home or other private spaces - in public spaces you have no expectations of privacy, and a stranger can take photos of you, or look at you, without your permission, so long as they do not then try to use those photographs commercially - selling the photos is fine for editorial use (in a newspaper for example), selling your likeness to promote some product is not. This is a codification of common sense really,
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Get a clue. It isn't as much the presence of the photos on FB that Grandparent is objecting to. It's the tagging of the photo by friends.
Sure, any photo taken in public is 'public knowledge.' But photos taken in public by strangers aren't captioned. And it isn't being 'fanatical about privacy' to not want captioned photos of yourself out there beyond your control. That's the entire fricking point about the Facial Recognition deal. It renders the captions world-searchable to a degree that was unthinkab
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I can sort of see your point, and I also think that it's irrelevant. I mean yeah, it's kinda scary that someone can take a photo and attach a name to it only to have someone else take that photo and that name to attach that name to another photo. And that other person may be stalking you for any nefarious reason.
The thing is, it happens anyhow. People started identifying you the first day you went to school, the teacher called your name and you said, "here." Some of the kids who were in the classroom wh
Re:Just the facial recognition component? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are missing the point by about a hundred thousand miles. What happens in real life cannot be cross connected and searched on in a fraction of a second. What computers brought to the picture is this ability. Cross the social security database with Facebook and Google databases and you've got a tool that is all dictators wet dreams.
Of course, nothing more than being recognized in the street. Except it is a lot more.
In France, we have a state-backed organism that basically prevents any private database from using a key from another database. It also forces companies to delete or update your account if you wish (it's the law that YOU have control over YOUR data even if it's in some companies database.)
It's a bit harder to build databases. Sure, using the SSN to identify everyone resolves a lot os issues, but that's strictly forbidden. As a result, identity theft is a concept that doesn't exist in France.
The fact that anyone can recognize you in the street is *not* equivalent to random people tagging you on Facebook.
Re:Just the facial recognition component? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not just the "likeness", it also includes:
* what you were wearing;
* where you were;
* what your current physiological state is (drunk, high, etc);
* who you were with
* what your current mental state is (happy, sad, etc);
All of this and more can be gleaned from these photos.
You may not object to this, but then people can start using this to tie together where people were at certain times. For example, you could have your photo from a party added to a database of other people at the same party, tied together not only by the photo album, but the photo date/time, the photo GPS location, shared information about where other people in the photo were, information gleaned from the background of the photo.. soon you're tracking where people are, what people are doing and who they associate with, all from a set of loosely-tied together photos tagged with face identification.
It's going on now. It's not affecting you, because you're likely a white dude in the united states. When its being publicly used by governments wishing to oppress people - then you may stand up and pay attention. When people start uploading photoshopped versions of photos to "establish" someone was at a certain location, thus tainting them in a way that gets said oppressive government to nab them .. who's to say this hasn't yet happened?
Re:Just the facial recognition component? (Score:5, Interesting)
If they snagged a photo of you, they probably did so because you interacted with them. At that point, what you do is public knowledge.
Our law disagrees. Actually, even taking a picture of someone (safe celebrities known to the law as "people of public interest") is not permitted without his or her explicit consent. Publishing this picture in whatever way requires consent again, and permitting the former does not imply permitting the latter in the slightest.
It's quite similar in Germany, btw.
Re: (Score:2)
Our law disagrees. Actually, even taking a picture of someone (safe celebrities known to the law as "people of public interest") is not permitted without his or her explicit consent.
Actually... in US states it is "permitted", generally. If you are on public property, you can in general photograph anything or anyone you ordinarily observe. There is nothing to prevent that. Even if the subject doesn't want their picture to be known to the public. If they happen to walk by or through the viewfinde
Re: (Score:3)
If they snapped a photo of you while you were walking down the street, deal with it because that is a public space and anyone could have done that.
And in isolation nobody gives a shit about that photo.
Its that everything is aggregated an linked together. If my friend or my neighbor takes a photo of me walking down the street, and its uploaded to flicker as part of some random "what i saw today" album that's entirely reasonable.
If everyone in the city has their web cams pointed at the street, all the streams
Re:Just the facial recognition component? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ditto. And I get constant e-mails from Facebook because my friends decided to import their address books and now Facebook knows me. What's amazing is that my dead uncle who I only met once in person while living, his account still exists and Facebook keeps telling me he "wants to reconnect" with me. Yeah, I'm never signing up.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What's amazing is that my dead uncle who I only met once in person while living, his account still exists and Facebook keeps telling me he "wants to reconnect" with me.
That's sick. But also an opportunity to shame Facebook into cleaning up their stupid spam. Claiming that specific people want to reconnect with you when they don't, is deception, and I think it should be illegal for companies to do that. They're basically using your dead uncle to advertise their service. And considering he's dead, it's pretty obvious he didn't give permission for that.
DMCA? (Score:2)
Can you use DMCA method to take down the photos.? Obviously, you have to prove that the photos. contain you to the authorities. :(
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously, you have to prove that the photos. contain you to the authorities. :(
Just because the photo contains an image of you does not give you any copyright ownership.
Unless specified otherwise by a written agreement the photographer in general owns the right to the photos. You would also need to prove you created the scene/captured the picture, so have a copyright claim, which is quite difficult if you were a subject of the picture.
This kind of thing comes up a lot when people employ the services of
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Slashdot on Google: "Google is awesome! Google+ already has 25 million users. So what if your info is out there, you give out your info with everything you do. It's not a big deal. Snooping passwords and emails with Street View vans? Your fault for not securing your network! Excuse me while I send more private messages through Gmail to be indexed for advertisers."
Slashdot on Facebook: "The whole damn site is a privacy violation! People are doing things with my pictures without my knowing, and I have no way
Re: (Score:2)
Gee, it's almost like slashdot is composed of individuals with different opinions isn't it?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The whole damn site is a privacy violation.
You could say that about the entire Internet.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The problem isn't so much the existence of the photo, more that it has become trivial to link a person's name to it.
Trying to find someone specific using the mentioned services is like searching for the needle in the haystack. It becomes a completely different matter if it's done for you by some search engine.
I thought... (Score:2)
...you could just turn that feature off.
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s14e04-you-have-0-friends [southparkstudios.com]
And the rest of the World (Score:2)
it is comforting to hear this while the rest of the world it trying to outlaw anonymity on the net.
Postwar abuse? (Score:2, Interesting)
The German government, which possesses perhaps the world's most adamant privacy laws as a result of postwar abuse [...]
Could someone please explain what is meant/implied by "postwar abuse" here? Post WW1? Sorry, I don't get it :(
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the link.
Re: (Score:2)
Could someone please explain what is meant/implied by "postwar abuse" here? Post WW1? Sorry, I don't get it :(
Post WW2:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
katana already tagged it, but I think it was the East German state that came to mind: they weren't genocidal maniacs, but they were the surveillance society against which all others are judged.
"The Lives of Others" is about a Stasi agent.
My quibble is that there is no indication that the German government has the same restrictions that businesses in Germany do. I doubt you could get your public records removed if you requested it.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure all the east germans that died because they were trying to escape, will be happy to know that the STASI, along with the russians weren't either genocidal, or maniacs.
Re: (Score:2)
They definitely were not genocidal in anything resembling the way that the Nazis were: perhaps you don't understand the word "genocide." As far as state-sponsored violence, they were pretty much par-for-the-course with much of the rest of the planet during the Cold War. (Try adding up the statistics of deaths caused by US-backed right-wing governments in Iran, Iraq, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, for starters.)
The current sober estimate is that the East German government was responsible for the death of
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. And the soviets were peace loving socialists who didn't round up people and send them off to siberia because they refused to give up their cows.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you're confusing Russia with East-Germany now.
Re: (Score:2)
No, and German Privacy Law Officers (Datenschutzbeauftragte) are calling out companies who collect data on the internet for a living all the time for violating the Privacy Laws and are imposing fines on them.
Yes, it can be very expensive in Germany to not adhere to privacy laws.
Re: (Score:2)
Opinion not matter of fact (Score:3)
Just for starters: No court has ruled yet.
There has been an opinion from the germanys chief privacy officer, but this is not a court ruling or something else the police could enforce. Though he is likely to be right (in terms of european and german law), this FB face recognition is not officialy illegal.
the end of privacy? (Score:2)
I realize that Slashdotters in the main have a libertarian-ish bent, but you guys really need to understand that when these Web 2.0 moguls stand up and say "privacy is dead" they do have a leg to stand on. An awful lot of people the world over, especially in the US, do not fetishize anonymity to anywhere near the extent that you do. Mostly people don't give a damn because they never do anything anonymously themselves, and then on the rare occasion when they have to conjure up an opinion on the subject they'
Re:the end of privacy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop confusing anonymity with privacy.
Re: (Score:2)
Posting an anti-privacy rant with the name Schmidt was the first laugh. The second was your accusation that Slashdot is made up of libertarians. This community hates corporations and the free market.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow. I don't know if that's supposed to be anti-Semitic or some kind of joke about Germany passing this law (I'm Irish-American).
I'm about ready to get off this crazy train. Slashdot respects my privacy, so I can delete my account, right? OH WAIT
Re: (Score:2)
Wow. I don't know if that's supposed to be anti-Semitic or some kind of joke about Germany passing this law (I'm Irish-American).
It's a comment about the former CEO Google, a company that has made its money by harvesting huge amounts of personal information. Schmidt famously said:
If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place
Re: (Score:3)
Wow. I don't know if that's supposed to be anti-Semitic or some kind of joke about Germany passing this law (I'm Irish-American).
It's not. It's a joke about Google's previous CEO, who has also declared privacy dead.
Re: (Score:2)
You've got it completely backwards. Privacy is a shield against misconduct.
Privacy is what you have when you say only to a small group of friends, instead of broadcasting to the whole world, "let's go camping next weekend." And the misconduct that privacy protects you from, is someone who isn't in that group, inferring that next weekend is a particularly low-risk time to burgle you house.
Privacy is what you have when you securely exchange log
Re: (Score:3)
An awful lot of people the world over, especially in the US, do not fetishize anonymity to anywhere near the extent that you do.
The article was about Germany. Some parts of Germany have seen what large scale intrusion is like and are keen to avoid the same folly twice.
Privacy, more often than not, really is a shield for misconduct.
That is unmitigated bullshit, you're just rolling out the old "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" line.
Privacy, more often than not, really is a shield for m
Re: (Score:3)
> An awful lot of people the world over, especially in the US, do not
> fetishize anonymity to anywhere near the extent that you do.
Perhaps you could expand a little on why you chose the word 'fetishize' in that sentence instead of, say, 'value'.
sPh
S0 does that make a human brain illegal too? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Why are you intentionally being obtuse? This is about automated, mass identification for profit without a clear way to disable it, opt-out, or delete the data, nor do people really know who ends up with this information and what those buyers can do with it. You could say that's a problem with every single aspect of Facebook. However, people choose to put that info up (perhaps uninformed and without legal understanding of the terms of service but I digress) whereas this is automatic.
Anyway, I look forward to
Re: (Score:2)
I was being sarcastic.
While it's not as automated or public when it's individual people realizing who it is that they are seeing, Facebook is still doing the exact same thing as what even tiny infants are capable of - recognizing faces of people. If facebook should be outlawed for having software that does that, then by extension, it should be illegal for humans to do the same thing.
Of course, it's absurd to outlaw human thought. But if human thought can't be outlawed, why should emulating it?
Re: (Score:2)
If facebook should be outlawed for having software that does that, then by extension, it should be illegal for humans to do the same thing.
By that logic, because the military is allow to possess nuclear weapons, so should you be.
Of course, the circumstances are far different in each case, just as they are with Facebook. I'm not totally on Germany's side here... privacy nowadays is a really thorny issue.
Take GPS tracking. Should cops be allowed to stick a GPS tracker on your car just for the heck of it? Imag
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not really about limiting computers or their programmers per se. I see it as limiting the abuse a person or a corporation could do. Sort of like how high frequency trading could be done by a guy on the floor. He wouldn't come close by multiple magnitudes in comparison to a computer but he could still pull off trades here and there. One guy buying and reselling stocks for a $0.04 return per stock is one thing and banks of computers doing this to every stock trade, millions of times a second, built right
Re: "without a clear way to disable it" (Score:3)
This is about automated, mass identification for profit without a clear way to disable it, opt-out, or delete the data, nor do people really know who ends up with this information and what those buyers can do with it.
Account menu -> Privacy Settings -> Customize -> "Suggest photos of me to friends" Settings -> Disabled
Seems pretty clear to me, as it is a logical progression through the menus and pages. It's not hard to find. It is easy to disable. It's probably already disabled for many people.
And, at least on my account, it was disabled by default. i.e. As soon as I heard about this feature, I went immediately to my account privacy settings to turn it off and found that it was already turned off.
Re: (Score:2)
That's certainly nice of them (and quite unexpected from previous experience) to finally have some settings default to privacy. I would be interested to know if it stays that way the next time FB fiddles with the ToS or the privacy options. That's not minding the sheer number of privacy options and settings which makes all the harder for the less technically inclined to set correctly if they didn't give up immediately.
The interesting thing to thing about, though, is how they know not to suggest you. To me,
Re: (Score:2)
That's certainly nice of them (and quite unexpected from previous experience) to finally have some settings default to privacy. I would be interested to know if it stays that way the next time FB fiddles with the ToS or the privacy options. That's not minding the sheer number of privacy options and settings which makes all the harder for the less technically inclined to set correctly if they didn't give up immediately.
That's why I pretty much scramble for the privacy settings every time I see a news story about a new FaceBook feature. However, either a.) I've been lucky and they overlooked setting "on" as default for new features in my account or b.) they somehow actually take into account the privacy amount of current settings and make the new setting in line with that (e.g. if someone has everything shared with everyone, then the new thing defaults to "on", but if someone is like me and has things fairly well locked do
I'm in the wrong country... (Score:3, Interesting)
Amazing cars, unbelievable roads (with no speed limits in some cases!), good beer, good food, cool people, and a government that fights for its peoples privacy? When did moving to Germany become attractive? How did we in the US reverse our roles with the krauts?
Deutschland über alles i'm afraid
Nifty? (Score:3)
Not sure who the "we" is in the summary, but I don't know anyone who thinks the facial recognition feature is anything other than creepy.
Hope not! (Score:2)
If someone has a picture up there in which I can be recognized, but not tagged me in it, I'd never know. This feature will auto-tag me and presumably let me know just like any other tagging on Facebook. If I don't like the picture I can ask to have it removed. I can't do that if I don't know it's there.
If people are concerned with pictures of them behaving stupidly, revealing infidelity and insurance scams (in relation to work related injuries) and similar, the advice is mind-numbingly simple: JUST DON'T DO
Not "banned". (Score:5, Informative)
From the original source (http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20110803-36703.html):
"Johannes Caspar, Hamburg’s data protection official, on Tuesday said the feature was a serious violation of people’s rights to determine what is done with their personal data. He added that German authorities would take quick legal action if Facebook did not comply with his demands.
This could include fines of up to €300,000 ($426,000), Caspar said.
“Should Facebook maintain the function, it must ensure that only data from persons who have declared consent to the storage of their biometric facial profiles be stored in the database,” he said."
At the moment this is just an opinion of the appointed guy for data protection of the city state of Hamburg. Not even a minister/secretary. Although he certainly has a point and Facebook could be fined, Germany is not Iran. We don't just "ban" stuff.
one right (Score:3)
I don't defend our government much, in fact I think it's the current one is the worst this country has ever had (i.e. since WW2).
So it's no surprise that I don't have to. The real truth is that the stupid government hasn't done anything. Including here.
What has happened is that one of the privacy watchdogs (yes, we actually pay people to watch out for privacy invasions. Guess who they call out regularily? Yes, that's right, the government!) has raised the issue formally, declaring that in his opinion the facial recognition and some other features violate existing laws.
That's got nothing to do with the government. In fact, if they had their way, we wouldn't be having this much privacy anymore, they've been undermining it for years.
What it will go to if Facebook doesn't cave in is the courts.
Re:And yet (Score:5, Informative)
Personally I'd like to know what the "post war privacy abuses" that TFA is speaking of that turned Germany so pro privacy.
How quickly we forget that before 1990 what we now know as "Germany" included *EAST* Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi [wikipedia.org]
The East German Stasi had a network where neighbours ratted each other out, had huge databases listing all kinds of data of their citizens... On and on. As a consequence, much of Germany now has a huge pro-privacy culture, and a sense that citizens must 'never again' be tracked.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The problem is not the facial recognition itself, it's the tagging and linking of faces you recognized with the faces and profiles of others, that's done a) automatically and b) without you being able to opt out.
So from a privacy law point of view it's totally ok to tag all your Picasa pictures with the names of the people - as long as you don't share this information with anyone else. And that's the problem with Facebook's way of doing things.
Because your profile picture can not be opted out of the face re