Google Wins Dismissal of Suit Over Facial Recognition Software (bloomberg.com) 152
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.
Re: These lawsuits will always fail on "injury" te (Score:1)
Mom! Phineas and Ferb are making a title sequence!
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why the fuck wasn't this filed in state court?
IDK. It makes no sense. According to TFA, the case was filed on the basis of an Illinois law, so why was it a federal lawsuit?
Even worse, the state law doesn't require injury (Score:3)
The Illinois statute says the plaintiffs are entitled to the greater of:
A) $1,000
B) Their actual injury / loss
The (stupid?) plaintiffs' attorney filed a federal action under title 3 which requires injuries addressed to be "concrete and particularized" and "actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical."
There is no concrete injury here, so it looks like the plaintiff's attorney screwed up. Should have filed in Illinois and taken $1,000 / person. It's possible that they did first file in Illinois and s
SCOTUS reversed the 9th circuit (Score:4, Informative)
I find it interesting that you would cite the 9th circuit's reasoning in Spokeo, and fail to note that the ruling you cite was overruled by Supreme Court.
As the Supreme Court held in Spokeo:
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a plaintiff does not automatically satisfy
the injury-in-fact requirement whenever a statute grants a right and purports to authorize a suit to vindicate it. Article III standing requires a concrete injury even in the context of a statutory violation.
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Are you going to cite Dred Scott next and pretend it's current and correct law?
More from the Supreme Court in Spokeo, the exact case you tried to cite: ...
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(1) The Ninth Circuit's injury-in-fact analysis elided the independent "concreteness" requirement. Both observations it made concerned only "particularization," i.e., the requirement that an injury "affect the plaintiff in a personal and individual way," Lujan, supra, at 560, n. 1, but an injury in fact must be both concrete and particularized, see, e.g., Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, 573 U. S. Concreteness is quite different from particularization and requires an injury to be "de facto," that is, to actually exist.
We have made it clear time and time again that an injury in fact must be both concrete and particularized.
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Re: These lawsuits will always fail on "injury" t (Score:1, Interesting)
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 too
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Sure they were, first their privacy was violated. Second your biometric data like your DNA is your own property, especially in the United States where you copyrighted it upon creation via growth and grooming and copyrights multiply with contributors not divide. Google used that property without your consent and also devalued any gains to be made by privacy and may have caused secondary damages for many people (divorces, social complications, etc).
Anytime someone abuses your freedoms and makes revenue there
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Good decision - pictures were taken in public (Score:2, Informative)
It's about *permanency*, not publicness. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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I hope you can forgive that silly blunder. :)
Oh, no problem at all! Of course people will forgive your mistake, even though a record of it still exists.
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That's great and all, but the whole problem with that argument is that the "right to be forgotten" laws are bonkers.
If you do something in public (whether in cyberspace or meatspace), then it's absurd to expect that, on demand, you can require all the rest of the world to pretend you didn't do what you did, that you weren't there, etc. If I'm painting in a public park and you're standing in the scene I'm painting, can you require that painting to be destroyed? Of course not.
I totally get the problems that t
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"Choices have consequences, and forgiveness is not dependent upon everyone pretending the past never happened."
No but there needs to remain a reasonable ability to make it difficult for new people to find out. Most of this isn't about people, it is about companies harvesting data and selling it for fun and profit. Companies are not people and there is no particular reason they should be allowed to retain data about people without their consent.
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there needs to remain a reasonable ability to make it difficult for new people to find out
Why?
The words we said were really said. The things we did really happened. No amount of pretending or trying to force everyone else to pretend otherwise will change that.
The right to be forgotten laws seem like an offshoot of the same mentality that has a lot of people obsessing with their social media presence - that desire to keep up airs and cultivate that my-life-is-always-great image. And then when their real selves slip through the mirage and they post something stupid, they scramble to take down the
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"The words we said were really said. The things we did really happened."
Some action you engaged in isn't your real self, it's just something you did. Everyone says something poorly, has a wrong idea, lets emotion cloud their judgement or get caught up in a moment. Those fuck-ups belong to them and those involved forever but they don't belong to anyone else. In a perfect world even you don't dwell on your past and build mountains of emotional baggage. People grow, evolve, and change and the vast majority of
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You seem to be looking at things in black and white
Hehe, no, I simply disagree with you.
Look, every human being deals with the faults of others. Every single human relationship involves looking past weaknesses, forgiving, and moving beyond mistakes. Getting good at that - getting good at realizing everyone else is full of faults just like you, and getting good at not getting hung up on someone else's mistakes (especially when they've shown a desire to change and overcome that fault) is an essential part of growing up and being a member of society.
Trying to
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"Choices have consequences, and forgiveness is not dependent upon everyone pretending the past never happened."
No but there needs to remain a reasonable ability to make it difficult for new people to find out.
That is easy. Just don't Instagram/Post about every little drunken binge or cutesy thing you ever see. The problem is that people want all the validation that lots of attention gets, but do not want the drawbacks when the attention is for being stupid. If you want to be famous and have thousands of followers see and ogle your photos and "envy your trips", then you also need to realize there can be a downside when a future employer/partner/mate sees you have spent 10 years on a drunken bender in Barcelona
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"That is easy. Just don't Instagram/Post about every little drunken binge or cutesy thing you ever see."
People are humans with all the human quirks and flaws. We could all live in huts on mountain tops and avoid these issues but even if YOU don't post every little thing on FB and instagram, everyone else at the party did. That time an old college buddy who never really grew up came to town and you reverted into a stupid younger version of yourself for an evening... well you might not see it since you aren't
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Yeah and being a little more responsible during that time almost certainly brought you rewards and advantages but not everyone has the same life and the same experiences. Some people grow up at 8, 18, 38, etc in fact, all of them do, in different ways. Not having enjoyed that time also has consequences of a different sort and relatively speaking your social intelligence was almost certainly impaired.
"But I guess in a modern culture where students demand that loans they willfully and knowingly took out must
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I have a serious problem with forgiving student debt because "people told them to take the loans". Supposedly they are 18 and are adults. We trust them with cars, firearms (long arms), and the vote. Yet we're supposed to forgive them for the choices they make? Perhaps they're not mature enough to go to college in the first place... Perhaps they need to wise up and realize you can pay for a lot of your own college without loans (yes, work during college; grades will suffer, but you'll be much better fin
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Except we can't learn from it or move on anymore. Anything you say at any point in the past can be brought up in an attempt to ruin your life now.
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Except we can't learn from it or move on anymore. Anything you say at any point in the past can be brought up in an attempt to ruin your life now.
Yes and no. I mean, in some ways that has always been the case, so ultimately this boils down to whether or not the Angry Online Mob gets to rule or not.
For awhile there would be immediate hysteria if anything bad from your past was uncovered, and you'd get blackballed and shamed. While the hysteria is still happening, there are some signs here and there that people are getting tired of the mob and are starting to stand their ground a little. The Kevin Hart example was interesting because he did stand his g
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Don't know if you're the same AC or not, but you are conflating forgiveness with forgetting.
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Who called the law "the right to be forgotten"? Nobody with an IQ of more than 0.5 expects to be able to erase people's memories.
It's the right to stop any old Tom, Dick, or Harry broadcasting your personal data for ever and a day.
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That's the intent at least, but it's nearly impossible to capture just that in a right-to-be-forgotten law, so the result ends up being a law that has all sorts of goofy implications and creates a mess. If you're a public performer and don't like a review someone did of your show, just claim that the review is personal data and demand the review be removed (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/31/pianist-asks-the-washington-post-to-remove-a-concert-review-under-the-e-u-s-right-to-be-
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You're conflating forgiveness (and letting someone move past a mistake) with forgetting, but the two aren't the same. You're also creating a strawman argument with:
The kind of people who come out against this are the "You shall be judged, forever guilty" kind.
Ironically, burying past mistakes is one of the things gives them power. Owning up to a mistake is in itself powerful, and disarms people who would use things from your past against you.
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So what, if you are taking a picture of someone or something on a busy street you can't publish it because you don't have consent from the random people who might have been in the shot?
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Wasn't a privacy argument (Score:2)
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Maybe, but your biometric data like your DNA is your property, you copyrighted it on creation. You are your own work of art, freshly made each day. Google may own the copyright on the picture but that doesn't mean it isn't a derivative work.
There are other factors as well. I may punch my pin into the atm in public where there is no expectation of privacy but if you film it and sell the results on the web you are still breaking the law.
Tangible damages are easy to prove, google is profiting from this activi
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So what? If you sign your name in public, does that give everyone nearby licence to photograph and reproduce it as often as they like? If you read a book in public, can I photograph every page and then read it myself for free?
In other words there are other laws that apply. For example in the EU you can't do much about people taking photos which you happen to be in when out in public, but that's different from them say lifting your fingerprints from something you touched or deliberately taking a photo of you
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So what? If you sign your name in public, does that give everyone nearby licence to photograph and reproduce it as often as they like?
Yes, as long as it does no damage to you. Then that is fraud
If you read a book in public, can I photograph every page and then read it myself for free?
No, because the author/publisher can show actual monetary harm (someone bought the book for $11.99, and you didn't) - unlike your photos on your Instagram feed.
Such things are covered by GDPR and the European Convention on Human Rights.
Both of which are terrible ideas. For many reasons...
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If you hyperlink the words of a lawyer, they're really the words of a lawyer. Like, for real, man.
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"and there is no commercial use of the images"
Remind me again how a for profit company's actions aren't commercial use again? If you steal my toasters and use them in a give away at your bake sale that IS commercial use. Whether Google gives them away for free or even takes a loss doesn't change that those efforts are for the purpose of drawing eyes to their platform to increase their profit and that makes everything they do commercial use.
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Then what is the law concerning public places actually like then? If you're going to ad hominem at least tell us what law applies and how.
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None of that matters, the judge found that plaintiffs hadn't been harmed. So it doesn't matter what the law is; there is no lawsuit.
If it is inappropriate or not isn't going to be discovered by claiming harm. You'd have to find some sort of forum where appropriateness can be considered, like in Congress.
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It doesn't matter where the pictures were taken - the issue is what happened later. The expectation of privacy applies to what happened after they were uploaded to servers
which are publicly open and the content hosted on them are visible by the entire Internet. In other words - there should be ZERO expectation of privacy when you post a public photo openly on Google, Instagram, Youtube, etc.
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Lack of concrete injuries (Score:1, Insightful)
Is that really a thing? If you break the law and nobody gets hurt, doesn't mean you shouldn't be penalized. For example, what if I'm texting and driving and I don't hit anyone? Does that mean I shouldn't be slapped with a fine for distracted driving -- because there are no concrete injuries?
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Re: Lack of concrete injuries (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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I think you are confusing criminal law with civil law. Getting a fine from the police means you've broken a criminal law. Getting sued means someone thinks you've damaged them in some fashion and is seeking remedy via civil law. No damage means no remedy, and therefore no suit. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and have never studied law.
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What law was broken here?
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Texting while driving is a direct and immediate threat to public safety and the laws are a preventative measure. All moving violations are enforced for the same reason. Right now there is no danger in taking someone's picture in public spaces. The lawsuit got tossed because the people submitting the lawsuit cannot convince the court that taking picture your picture in public are harmful in any way.
Needs statutory injuries for privacy violations (Score:2)
It's a thing in civil court. The government can fine you without demonstrating injury (your "texting and driving" example), but I cannot sue you for texting and driving next to me unless you injury me in some way (crash into me, etc.) Copyright law attached a "statutory injury" for copyright violations, at the RIAA/MPAA request. So they no longer have to prove the loss of sales, the law already assumes it. We should have statutory injury for privacy violations. Then you would just be able to say "publi
So stalking is now a victimless crime? (Score:1)
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What a person can see from public property is all ok.
Now big fast new computers can find that image set again and again.
As much as I dislike meatspace tracking (Score:2, Funny)
As much as I dislike the idea of meatspace tracking (and joining of data between meatspace and internet, make no mistake -- this is the ultimate goal of Google et al), I'm pleased with the decision. Don't like it? Take it up with your congresscritter.
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You need a GDPR style privacy law that bans this kind of thing without explicitly opt-in permission.
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I would like widespread facial tracking to be illegal nationwide for both companies and the government without a court order. Right now it's a crazy free-for-all.
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Wear a facemask for you health, don't you know it's a fact, a lot of the dust in the atmosphere is animal and insect faeces and you will in probility terms extend you life and suffer less illness if you wear a facemask in the metro, want privacy, start getting everyone to do it.
That is bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Prior to ubiquitous mobile phone cameras and fixed cameras, there was essentially some level of "privacy" even when in public, because of the impracticality of gathering such data and having the wide scope of data collection to be able to "connect the dots".
Always been legal to have a P.I. tail and photograph you in public.
Always been legal to sit on a bench every day for twenty years and make a note of who passed by.
There were many ways even before smartphones you COULD HAVE easily been tracked if someone
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Then play the parallel construction game of how to put a US face into a database when no such US federal database can exist.
Now its all just data to be searched and everyone can have a go.
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Fingerprints, images, voice prints the French can do it all.
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Always been legal to [... etc ...]
Yes it has.
And this is why laws get made. From anything other than a legal point of view there is a material difference between something done at a personal scale (sitting on a bench, hiring a PI) and a massive systematic effort by a vast and incredibly well funded company.
People reconise the difference between the possibility that a PI might track them and the certainty that google is. The law doesn't, and this is ultimately why laws get made. It's both dickish and harmful
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Widespread fully-automated surveillance of public spaces is to hiring a P.I. to tail one person, as a machine gun is to a semi-auto .22
Funny how the one that gives the government more power is legal yet the analogous one that gives the people more power is banned. If private citizens set up their OWN mass-public-surveillance system to track where every politician goes and when, it'll be cracked down on quickly (with a nice exemption for the government to do the same thing.)
Not saying I think full-auto firea
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You betrayed your own point when you said "even before smartpohones you COULD HAVE easily been tracked if someone cared". This is substantively different from - you are DEFINITELY being tracked. In other words - it has always been legal to have a PI tail someone, is much different than someone (or a corporation in this case), having a PI tail EVERYONE
Having a PI tail everyone is substantively different from what they are actually doing which is getting random images from the internet and doing facial recognition on them.
and then sell that information to anyone interested.
Can you show me where I can actually buy that information? No, because that's not happening.
I don't know what "public privacy" might mean either, but there is a definite difference between taking a photo in public and strategically photographing effectively all of public space.
And there is a definite difference between what you describe and what is actually happening. Maybe if they were strategically videoing and processing effectively all of public space but that's not even remotely what they are doing.
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Is this how law works? (Score:1)