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Facebook sued for storing biometric data mined from photographs

cnet.com

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Re: Facebook sued for storing biometric data mined from photographs

#111

Post by Normal_gaussian »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #63
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of the human personal assistant the governing terms originate with the person being assisted, and so the data and the ways it can be used remain in control of the owner. Tech companies are inverting this control, which has very dangerous implications for those they assist. There are ways to keep control with the user, however these require a level of architecture inversion the consumers haven't fought for…

In the case of the human personal assistant the governing terms originate with the person being assisted, and so the data and the ways it can be used remain in control of the owner. Well, the data and ways it can be used are also in control of the user now, they just all agree to it - even without knowing it in many cases. My question is: how do we talk to consumers to show them the benefits while also informing them…

You seem to be arguing as though the current situation is preferable and consumers just need to be convinced of that.

Firstly, the user is not in control of the contract. They have no realistic means of modification or exerting pressure, nor resisting or requiring changes. Take it or leave it is not control.

Secondly. You are likely aware of the permissions systems being introduced on modern smartphones. This is an interesting step towards inverting the control of the device back towards the user.

Similar steps can be made in other areas. CNN training is certainly a different action to usage, and has different privacy implications, so they should obtain permissions independently.

Note how these systems are not permission forever, but permission for now. Handling this sort of data access is a pain, but it isn't actually hard.

Re: Facebook sued for storing biometric data mined from photographs

#112

Post by Chronic51 »

gcr wrote: post #14

To be clear: the article claims that Facebook can recognize anyone just by seeing them. They haven't demonstrated this ability. It's far easier to judge who's in your picture among your 20 closest friends than it is to find that face among all two billion Facebook users. State of the art recognition systems still have a few orders of magnitude of accuracy improvements to go before they can solve that problem. See the…

Using only facial recognition cannot identify a person in the world. However, combined with one or two GPS points (photo geotags), you can get pretty damn close.

Re: Facebook sued for storing biometric data mined from photographs

#113

Post by thatusertwo »

untog wrote: post #33
sametmax wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the scary part. The scary part is that people are feeding the facebook DB with pictures, and many more data. They did it, they are doing it, and will keep it up, despite everything we told them. The scary part is that nobody cares.

That's the entirely expected part. I don't know exactly which "we" you're referring to, but the tech scene in general absolutely did not warn people about the dangers of uploading these photos, on the contrary, they encouraged it. I don't think it's reasonable to expect "everyday" people to know the dangers here. There hasn't been any education, so you can't say "nobody cares". Nobody is aware.

I doubt that awareness will make any different, even when people are told about the issues with using facebook / instagram they keep on using it.

People won't change until they get a serious wakeup call, but even then they will mostly not do anything.

Re: Facebook sued for storing biometric data mined from photographs

#114

Post by Spooky23 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #102
jgalt212 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress is broke and the tech companies know it and optimize against this and will continue to make hay while the sun shines (i.e. before the US produces any effective consumer privacy legislation).

It doesn't cost anything to enact legislation. Congress is a sunk cost.

Funny.

Congress cannot afford the lawyers needed to write that kind of legislation. The lobbyists write the laws they advocate for.

Re: Facebook sued for storing biometric data mined from photographs

#115

Post by Spooky23 »

Mendenhall wrote: post #65
untog wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the entirely expected part. I don't know exactly which "we" you're referring to, but the tech scene in general absolutely did not warn people about the dangers of uploading these photos, on the contrary, they encouraged it. I don't think it's reasonable to expect "everyday" people to know the dangers here. There hasn't been any education, so you can't say "nobody cares". Nobody is aware.

That sort of the amazing part to me. Even on hacker news with very educated people they dont talk much about all the ways its possible to abuse it. I think much of the tech scene is making money off it so no one says much about all the ways such info can be abused.

It's pretty hard to really critique FB here. There's wide respect for their technical prowess and achievements.

It's odd to me that they don't attract the ire the Microsoft did in the old days. They are far more dangerous.

Re: Facebook sued for storing biometric data mined from photographs

#116

Post by breatheoften »

Photos permission access is too granular on iOS -- they should add a third access state for photos that grants an app permission to "write new photos to photo album, but prevents an app from scraping the photos library" ... Or maybe that should be the behavior of the current permission grant ...

Re: Facebook sued for storing biometric data mined from photographs

#117

Post by toomuchtodo »

Spooky23 wrote: post #114
toomuchtodo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't cost anything to enact legislation. Congress is a sunk cost.

Funny. Congress cannot afford the lawyers needed to write that kind of legislation. The lobbyists write the laws they advocate for.

Strangely enough, Elizabeth Warren was able to put together comprehensive legislation to work towards ending Intuit's (to name the largest offender) corporate welfare [1] in the tax prep software space. Or is there an anti-private corporation/pro IRS tax prep lobbyist I'm missing?

[1] https://www.warren.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=1110

Re: Facebook sued for storing biometric data mined from photographs

#118

Post by rpgmaker »

saturncoleus wrote: post #10
proksoup wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scary, but inevitable, no? As technology improves, it's hard to imagine regulations keeping pace with preventing this sort of thing ... And even if they did, then it would only be used by criminals and governments (while I may call it criminal, they would likely exclude themselves from any such regulation), and I'm not sure that situation (criminals and governments being the only users of the technology) is a better…

If you have ever watched the TV show Black Mirror, it does an exploration of what it would be like to have instant access to know everything about a person by looking at them. The technology becomes a commodity and results in the destruction of personal relationships rather than a dystopian big brother society. It seems to me that is a much more likely future than a criminal and government oppression future. Is one o…

That is similar to the outcome that Asimov explores in The Dead Past[1] and like you he lets the government off the hook very easily, like it is a benevolent entity that won't exploit the technology already in the hands of the masses when we know this to be untrue. If technology reaches a point where it disrupts all personal relationships the government wouldn't be far behind creating the dystopian "big brother" society you speak of (which depending who you ask may have already been built).

[1] http://www.rednovels.net/ScienceFiction/Asimov41/27323.html

Re: Facebook sued for storing biometric data mined from photographs

#119

Post by AndrewKemendo »

saturncoleus wrote: post #10
proksoup wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scary, but inevitable, no? As technology improves, it's hard to imagine regulations keeping pace with preventing this sort of thing ... And even if they did, then it would only be used by criminals and governments (while I may call it criminal, they would likely exclude themselves from any such regulation), and I'm not sure that situation (criminals and governments being the only users of the technology) is a better…

If you have ever watched the TV show Black Mirror, it does an exploration of what it would be like to have instant access to know everything about a person by looking at them. The technology becomes a commodity and results in the destruction of personal relationships rather than a dystopian big brother society. It seems to me that is a much more likely future than a criminal and government oppression future. Is one o…

Seems like you are implying that the stability of relationships is based on a lack of knowledge about someone.

In which case that speaks more towards the frailty of relationships rather than a problem of information.

Re: Facebook sued for storing biometric data mined from photographs

#120

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

fiatjaf wrote: post #94
astazangasta wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love React, but I hate Facebook. I also love C and Unix and the transistor, but I never really cared for AT&T.

If you love React like most React lovers out there you love the team that makes Facebook, and you think everything they do is awesome and super cool: Flux, Flow, React Native, GraphQL and so on. If not directly responsible, these people are at least accomplices of all the horrible things Facebook may be doing.

> If you love React like most React lovers out there you love the team that makes Facebook

You can love a product without loving the team behind it. See: Bitcoin

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