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Face Search Engine Raises Privacy Concerns
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Dec 19, 2006 02:48 PM
from the i-forget-the-mane-but-the-pace-is-familiar dept.
from the i-forget-the-mane-but-the-pace-is-familiar dept.
holy_calamity writes "Startup Polar Rose is in the news today after announcing it will soon launch a service that uses facial recognition software, along with collaborative input, to identify and find people in photos online. But such technology has serious implications for privacy, according to two UK civil liberties groups. Will people be so keen to put their lives on Flickr once anyone from ID thieves to governments can find out their name, and who they associate with?"
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Face Search Engine Raises Privacy Concerns
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Lesson #1 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lesson #1 -- Don't Expect Privacy Online (Score:4, Insightful)
My advice to anybody who wants their cake and eat it too: Use different handles for different applications.
That is, if you want to indulge in the MySpace/LJ/VOX blogging, then use a handle unique to that type of activity (eg. BlogUser99).
If you want to indulge in Flickr/Photobucket/Picasa photo-sharing, then use a different handle (eg. PhotoDad12).
The same goes for social bookmarking and product reviews on Amazon and the like.
And, of course you should never use your full name except for in business transactions.
By using different handles, you'll give black hats/feds/5kr1p7-k1dd13z a hard time trying to figure out who you really are.
Just my 0b00000010..
Re:Lesson #1 -- Don't Expect Privacy Online (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. I submitted a story to
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15994151/site/newswee
From that story, a good example:
Cheap video technology (esp. video-capable cellphones) and social sites make it all possible.
Simply being in public can get you on these social sites, whether you actually use them (or have even HEARD of them) or not. In the end, the only way to ensure your privacy is to not become a part of society. If you venture into public, you too could end up on some social web site.
And remember--this is the PUBLIC engaging in a type of surveillance on the PUBLIC. For the tinfoil hats out there, it's not just the government's watchful eye you have to be careful around; it's that video-capable cellphone in the hands of the seemingly innocent rider sitting across from you on the train, too.
squeezing out the marginalized (Score:5, Insightful)
In a technical (and technological) sense, you're absolutely right. Given the nature of digital information, anybody putting any information online would be well advised to act as though it is going to get back to everybody they know, perhaps through channels that don't even exist at the time you put the information online.
But the more complicated social reality is that in most people's experience, the public-private distinction has usually been one of probability and degrees, not an all-or-nothing proposition. It used to be the case (and still is, though less and less so) that you could go to certain technically public places and still have a practical/probabilistic expectation of privacy. For example, you could go to a political or cultural event for an unpopular group (a gay pride parade, for example) and have a reasonable hope that it wouldn't get back to your employer or family. You might be in a technically public space and you (hopefully) knew you were taking a risk, but the risk was small enough that it was worth it.
The problem raised by this kind of technology is that it is eliminating those kinds of physical and virtual spaces -- the spaces where you can meet and interact with others and have some practical (if not airtight) expectation of privacy. The fact is, there are very few real places you can socialize with lots of other people that have a truly complete expectation of privacy, so the probabilistic expectation is often the best you can hope for. For people with some kind of politically or culturally marginalized interest -- and let's face it, who doesn't have at least one interest that falls into that category -- it's a sad development.
"collective intelligence" (Score:5, Funny)
They seem to have made a fatal assumption.
Privacy?? (Score:1)
(http://www.iatse129.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday April 18 2007, @09:41PM)
Governments? (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://bmitch.net/)
You don't have to put it up (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me say this now. (Score:1)
Video of how it works (Score:1)
pr0n (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.atomjax.com/)
The only "facial" recognition software I use is Google Image Search with Safesearch turned off.
you can't hide from everyone (Score:4, Insightful)
Acid face test... (Score:1)
(http://www.creimer.ws/ | Last Journal: Friday January 26 2007, @12:40PM)
No big deal, it won't work anyways (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No big deal, it won't work anyways (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong: nowadays, anything that remotely has to do with security, identification, tracking and general populace control (to save us all from all these hordes of terrorists of course) is big money. Look at most of the advances in computing these days: they're almost all about biometrics, RFID, detectors of this-or-that... Most of it is hype, but it nets whomever spews it a lot of government money.
Finally (Score:2, Funny)
She's been sending me pictures of herself (chuckles) and her name is Sonya..
She's SO sexy she's got me worried, but my worries will finally go away as soon as I check her photo with this new service!!!
Yes, they will. (Score:2)
(http://lists.clickers.org/linuxsig/index.html | Last Journal: Friday November 09, @11:00PM)
Will people be so keen to put their lives on Flickr once anyone from ID thieves to governments can find out their name, and who they associate with?"
The bad guys already know so hiding only hurts your friends. The resources they own are the ISP, your non free OS, your phone calls and public "security cameras". Your friends only have what you can give them. The bad guys want to limit your ability to match their power and knowledge. The only solution is to guard what's really private and give rest away as freely as possible.
Now, the Permanent Record (Score:2)
(http://www.animats.com)
And now, every picture on Myspace will become part of your Permanent Record.
But at least dating sites will be able to filter out copies of pictures of famous people and porn stars.
Witness Protection (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.astroreverb.com/)
Setting aside the fact that, at least right now, sunglasses fool these systems... if someone, lets say, a member of the Talini Crime family wants to find a rat. By giving a picture of him to this company, they could then search for pictures on the internet he appears in.
Considering how many pictures people take with random people in the background, it seems inevitable that said rat would turn up.
South Polar Rose (Score:1)
I've had a bunch of photos with no faces that I'd like to put names to for quite awhile now.
Tommy Lee was nice enough to identify one of them, but the others are just, well, unknown roses.
What's new? (Score:1)
Face Recognition, Body Recognition, ... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.speakeasy.org/~lion/)
Even the past will be open to analysis, a theme called "retroactive surveillance." For example, the Seattle bus system keeps timestamped footage of people coming in and out of the bus, and the Seattle bus system keeps records of where the buses are, and when, by GPS. In theory, these two systems can be correlated, and, if you have a system for analyzing faces, you should be able to connect the "network of data" to figure out who is where and when. This type of correlation is what software visionaries are working hard to achieve, with efforts such as the Semantic Web.
People who are worried about "the mark of the beast," through such things as RFID tags and so on, are worried about the wrong thing. You won't need to "wear" anything. You won't need any special marks, once software is sufficiently capable. Your face, your clothes, the way you walk, your posture, the regular patterns you follow every day, your voice, all are sufficient enough, in themselves, to serve as the "mark of the beast."
It is conceivable that you will be able to limit government use of this sort of technology. But will you be able to stop private users from using this sort of technology? If you envision a future revolution of some sort, do you believe that the revolutionaries would not use this technology themselves? To track the motion of police vehicles, and individual policemen, and the people who work for and against you?
The underlying activities behind these technologies: Collecting information, seeing, hearing, sensing, and then correlating what is seen, what is heard- these are foundational. The "problem" is simply intelligence, itself.
I doubt that willful blindness or doubt is going to help us in our path to the future. We see that backwards countries practicing willful blindness, not advanced ones.
a porn application (Score:1, Insightful)
(http://www.leroybrown.com/)
Well.. (Score:1)
I guess (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Thursday July 07 2005, @09:59AM)
wild goose chase (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://www.tysonwright.com/)
Reminds of the Libertarian Party (of which I am, unhappily, a member) - seriously complaining about trivial issues means that people will trivialize your complaints about serious issues.
Easier exams! (Score:1)
Oh *come* *on* (Score:2, Insightful)
Everybody knew about it and expected this technology to be perfected sooner or later (and for now it seems that it's still a bit later). So, if you were that worried about someone being able to Flickr and Google your personal relationships together, you should have thought twice about putting your entire life up for digital scrutiny in the first place.
The privacy problem isn't with this technology, it's with people who put their personal life on the biggest computer network ever, freely accessible to all and then expect it to be private.
They need to get their head examined and by the looks of it, that's exactly what they'll get.
LawL (Score:1)
Dating sites... (Score:3, Insightful)
This has probably been around for a while. (Score:1)
One thing to keep in mind is that the government generally ALWAYS has its hands on certain technologies LONG before the general public sees them (and often times before the general public even knows they exist). This technology has probably been developed and in existence for a while. The above quote might be better written as: "Will people be so keen to put their lives on Flickr once they realize governments can find out their name, and who they associate with?"
Not a problem (Score:1)
what about the applications? (Score:1)
No Problem (Score:1)
So I can steal HIS ID now.
Controlling how "public" information is used. (Score:2)
If you don't want that, try to keep your online profile as low as possible--there isn't much else you can do.
This always get to me--like when a guy (it happens every couple years) goes to the DMV and buys the DMV database and puts it online--all of a sudden everyone raises a stink. THE RECORDS ARE THERE--because this guy did something "new" with them is not a bad thing, perhaps making them available in the first place WAS.
There is also the implied fact/perception: people are "Trusting" that because the DMV is selling them for $300 or whatever, only businesses will buy them and therefore it's okay, it's the fact that this guy "Subverted" the business purposes and made them public is somehow worse. This is the stupidest pile of crap I've ever heard (and yeah, you hear that argument every time there is a discussion about this stuff).
Everyone would probably be a "Privacy Nazi" if they were smart enough to figure out what could be done with the information they are making public.
Current Technology Scary Enough (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/)
already done (Score:1, Informative)
There should be an opt out... (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://hendzen.org/)
Does that seem backward to anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
1)You put it there. In this case it's your own fault and you shouldn't complain.
2)Someone put it there without your permission. Think naughty landlords with hidden cameras or stalkers with telephoto lenses. In this case you generally don't know you're on the $/month "gentleman's website",interent shrine of undying love or heck, even some jerrk at work's myspace page and this image searcher has the possibility to point the fact out to you before someone you know spots it.
I would think people that don't want to be exposed on the internet would be happy to see something like this come out so they can see just how exposed they currently are.
Doesn't these things exist already? (Score:1)
Diamond (Score:2, Informative)
Hash Collisions (Score:2)
(http://straightblack.com/stripfighter/)
Trendy (Score:1)
time to scan that yearbook.... (Score:1)
This is asinine (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Monday August 07 2006, @03:43PM)
Re:What IS OK? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://homestarrunner.com/)
They have NEVER needed FISA warrants before listening. In the event that they need to tap in an emergency (where waiting for a FISA warrant could lose the chance at intelligence), they can just start doing so. However, they do need to apply for a warrant within 72 hours of starting the tap. How could any reasonable person have a problem with this? All they are saying is that you cannot wiretap without ever telling anyone about it.
We obviously need some sort of security. What is OK?
Yes, we do. But we cannot forget that we have a system of checks and balances. Democracy does not move as fast as a dictatorship, and a dictatorship can (in theory) move much faster to protect its citizens. If that is what we truly want as a country then let's just do it and quit pretending. This whole "we are still a democracy with governmental checks and balances but because the president declared war on an abstract concept he can do anything he wants" thing we have going now just does not make sense. The excuses are always so flimsy, it is always a claim that it is perfectly legal under written law and when that proves to be false then it becomes "oh well, none of that matter anyway because he's got unlimited wartime powers".
But you ask what we can do? Obviously we are doing some things that make a lot of sense. Better information between the intelligence agencies is a no-brainer, and I would go as far as saying going after the Taliban in Afghanistan was a good move as well (Iraq was obviously a horribly stupid blunder/distraction though).
However we do a lot of stupid things also. Hiring a lot of poorly trained rent-a-cops to play detective in the airports was probably not the best use of our resources. Insane restrictions on what we can take on airplanes do nothing for security, but make ignorant people feel safer. The whole slew of ways we try to throw billions in poorly thought out "technical" solutions like RealID, MagicLantern, facial recognition (which doesn't work any better than space lasers shooting at ICBMs), and whatever kludged algorithm generates the Mo-Fly list do nothing for security and cost both money and civil liberties.
There are many tried and true intelligence gathering and counter-terrorism techniques, but the current administration is more interested in presenting a color coded security theater for the masses complete with high tech sounding ("it involves computers so you know it must be good") projects. The paranoid thinks they are just using "terrorism" as a bogeyman to implement systems to track and control all citizens. I actually think that is a side effect of their actual motivation to dump money into their friend's and contributer's companies.
Finkployd
Re:What IS OK? (Score:1)
Hopefully, nothing. That fact that you hear about someone complaining about every move a gov makes means the system is working (how well its working is another debate). Some of these groups are annoying, some are just stupid, but they all serve as checks in one way or another. Take a look at countries that don't have these kind of groups and there are much more serious problems (treading close to Godwin's Law already).
An old quote that can't be brought up too often: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" Ben Franklin
Re:What IS OK? (Score:3, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Friday January 30 2004, @06:40PM)
Ok well to start, you cant fight a philosophy. What you are perhaps asking is that the government do more to fight Criminals. I would say that we have enough laws already to fight criminals. Some would say that this is a brave new world we live in and they need better tools to keep up with the crimes. I disagree that the world has magically changed and that we need to become a police state to fight for security. You will never be secure, because security is a concept of the mind (thats why gun enthusiasts think that they can buy security, they are somewhat right). Even your american founding fathers knew this in what was argueably a more savage and brutal world than the one we live in. They say clearly, dont sacrifice liberty for security, and I think whatever country you live in that thats a good idea. I would suggest that you instead look at the root causes and motivations of these particular criminals. Bin laden has said specifically what he wanted, most notably the USA out of the middle east. Why not start with that?
Re:What IS OK? (Score:2)
It sounds like you question the validity of the problems the various groups have with various policies. You should consider that the issues they bring up represent real costs in the "big picture" that have been otherwise ignored. Not that there aren't extremists, but that there are extremists on both the pro and the con side in roughly equal (probably bell-curve shaped) proportions.
Thus, when taken as a whole, if the real big picture costs outweigh the real big picture benefits, then in a perfect world, those policies would be canceled.
It is entirely possible that only a minimal amount of security can achieve a net benefit in the big picture. If that's true, then the best policy really would be minimal security measures.