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Facebook’s Face Recognition Tech Goes on Trial

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Re: Facebook’s Face Recognition Tech Goes on Trial

#31
post #23

From the article it sounds like the result of the lawsuit may be just that facebook adds a disclaimer to their ToS that you accept them using your biometric data by using their service. No surprise there, if you don't want any service collecting any of your data, don't use their service.

No surprise there, if you don't want any service collecting any of your data, don't use their service. Unfortunately, that doesn't go far enough. I don't use FB, but that doesn't mean it doesn't collect my data. It does because my husband and friends use FB, and I do not control the information they share about me with FB. Currently it has to be, "if you don't want any service collecting any of your data, don't use t…

>Currently it has to be, "if you don't want any service collecting any of your data, don't use their service, and don't interact with other people or companies who use their service."

Not sure you have any other option. Most of the time, you can't restrain what other people choose to do with images they've taken that contain your likeness, and you can't stop them from posting content that mentions their spouses. That person is willfully disclosing this data under the terms they've accepted. If the person is disclosing data about you that you don't want disclosed, that's an issue between you and that person, not that person and the entity who receives their willful, free, and unprompted disclosures.

Facebook can't know a priori that the user intends to disclose information on a person who doesn't want Facebook to know about them, and thus can't do anything about it until it's too late. Allowing people to delete other peoples' content because they don't want to be mentioned/included in it is an obvious non-starter (and Facebook already includes this to a reasonable extent with untagging features).

The privacy threat could be partially, not totally, mitigated by radically changing the way we approach online services, but I don't see how that could be pushed through. It wouldn't benefit any commercial entity, so no one with private motive would bankroll it to a height that could reasonably challenge FB, and it surely wouldn't be fair to use police/military force to dismantle Facebook et al and force users into a hypothetical somewhat-more-private decentralized, self-hosted, encrypted Facebook replacement, so we're basically stuck.

The reality is that this is the world we live in now. I don't think there's really a way to avoid it. Legal solutions that prevent vendors from referencing some data points may limit some effects here and there, but I think it's going to be difficult to craft something that really accomplishes anything big, and the tech and data is still going to be out there and used by some people regardless of the legal status.

Re: Facebook’s Face Recognition Tech Goes on Trial

#32
post #27
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We could soon have security cameras in stores that identify people as they shop,” Already deployed. Here's a report by a retailer who installed a face recognition system.[1] Names anonymized. “We now know within seconds of a person walking in the store if they’ve previously been caught stealing from us. ... Suppose Johnny Johnson is caught shoplifting at a Store-Mart branch. He’s detained, photographed, and given a…

What happens if nearly all retail stores had this and you got caught shoplifting. Are you no longer allowed to shop in public? Is thee a time limit, say 1 year, after which they should let you shop again?

> Is thee a time limit, say 1 year, after which they should let you shop again?

This implies a functioning government, and regulations.

Excluding is a decision made by each retailer individually, and the vast majority will not even have a policy for removing people from the list.

You could dynamically raise retail prices based on whether someone has bad credit, or is on one or more bad customers lists. Shouldn't the shoplifter be expected to pay extra for the risk that retailers willing to sell to them bear? Or you could just open stores that don't exclude with high prices and terrible quality products.

Re: Facebook’s Face Recognition Tech Goes on Trial

#33
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No surprise there, if you don't want any service collecting any of your data, don't use their service. Unfortunately, that doesn't go far enough. I don't use FB, but that doesn't mean it doesn't collect my data. It does because my husband and friends use FB, and I do not control the information they share about me with FB. Currently it has to be, "if you don't want any service collecting any of your data, don't use t…

But your husband and friends are at fault for sharing your information, not FB. Take Facebook out of the equation and you still have friends showing your picture around, perhaps to people you don't want them to. In a Facebookless world, you would simply tell them to stop. My point is that it isn't Facebook's fault that your friends share too much about you.

Yes, which means the original commenters position of "don't use their service" isn't strong enough, which is what I said. Note that "their service" isn't limited to FB.

Re: Facebook’s Face Recognition Tech Goes on Trial

#34
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But your husband and friends are at fault for sharing your information, not FB. Take Facebook out of the equation and you still have friends showing your picture around, perhaps to people you don't want them to. In a Facebookless world, you would simply tell them to stop. My point is that it isn't Facebook's fault that your friends share too much about you.

Yes, which means the original commenters position of "don't use their service" isn't strong enough, which is what I said. Note that "their service" isn't limited to FB.

Can it even store biometric data for you if it doesn't know who you are? I was under the assumption that it's only stored if your profile is linked with your face in a photo.

Re: Facebook’s Face Recognition Tech Goes on Trial

#35
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No surprise there, if you don't want any service collecting any of your data, don't use their service. Unfortunately, that doesn't go far enough. I don't use FB, but that doesn't mean it doesn't collect my data. It does because my husband and friends use FB, and I do not control the information they share about me with FB. Currently it has to be, "if you don't want any service collecting any of your data, don't use t…

>Currently it has to be, "if you don't want any service collecting any of your data, don't use their service, and don't interact with other people or companies who use their service." Not sure you have any other option. Most of the time, you can't restrain what other people choose to do with images they've taken that contain your likeness, and you can't stop them from posting content that mentions their spouses. That…

The reality is that this is the world we live in now. I don't think there's really a way to avoid it

I agree. Which is why when the original commenter stopped at "don't use their service", I pointed out that that action isn't enough. It's not good advice, because it doesn't actually work.

Re: Facebook’s Face Recognition Tech Goes on Trial

#36

> “We could soon have security cameras in stores that identify people as they shop,” I stopped using Facebook 5 years ago because I noticed using it made me unhappy. I continue to not go back because of privacy concerns like this.

You know people who use Facebook. They upload pictures that, more likely than not, include your face. Facebook knows your face even if it doesn't know your name (which people will often readily supply even if you don't have an account, so don't be so sure that they don't know your name too). You don't want to be "that guy" constantly demanding that your friends pull down any picture that you show up in, a request you…

> You don't want to be "that guy" constantly demanding that your friends pull down any picture that you show up in, a request your friends will probably ignore anyway, and which will greatly diminish your personal likability.

Mostly because it doesn't work. I've always been that guy, and people still constantly take your picture. There's a lot of money in convincing people that taking and sharing publicly pictures of oneself and everything that one comes into contact with is unbelievably fulfilling.

> I don't really think there's any way around it and I am in fact surprised that people haven't already made a public "search by face" engine. Correlate this data with Facebook or some other all-seeing collections and the technology to dynamically identify every individual that enters a building via surveillance footage is already there. The only thing holding it back now is a) political correctness and b) the practical difficulty of extracting all of this data at a large scale into a format that can be easily cross-referenced. Both of these are permeable and temporary restrictions, and access to the data is already a non-issue for some actors.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/17/findface-...

Its most innovative use seems to be to stalk and harass porn stars, prostitutes, and their families.

Re: Facebook’s Face Recognition Tech Goes on Trial

#37
post #24

As someone who had cosmetic surgery, it took a good amount of changes to be tagged as a "different" person by Facebook and the Photos app. One operation that altered the frontal view of the jaw seemed to have finally done the trick (many common operations like rhinoplasty mostly affect your side profile.)

Facebook doesn't properly identify me vs my brother, so they still have some things to work one.

Are you twins or just "regular" siblings?

Re: Facebook’s Face Recognition Tech Goes on Trial

#38
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, which means the original commenters position of "don't use their service" isn't strong enough, which is what I said. Note that "their service" isn't limited to FB.

Can it even store biometric data for you if it doesn't know who you are? I was under the assumption that it's only stored if your profile is linked with your face in a photo.

Can it even store biometric data for you if it doesn't know who you are?

That's a weirdly phrased question, since your biometric data is, by definition, part of "who you are".

I was under the assumption that it's only stored if your profile is linked with your face in a photo.

My comment has more do with the base concept of "don't want to be tracked, don't use their service" as a general concept for any service, rather than FB specific (which is why I gave a non-FB example). That said, I don't know if the rumors of "shadow profiles" are true or not. There is no technical reason why an image with two people in it (one of him which they already have) tagged with a comment of "Me and my wife on our honeymoon", couldn't be parsed given current NLP and face recognition capabilities.

Re: Facebook’s Face Recognition Tech Goes on Trial

#39
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, which means the original commenters position of "don't use their service" isn't strong enough, which is what I said. Note that "their service" isn't limited to FB.

Can it even store biometric data for you if it doesn't know who you are? I was under the assumption that it's only stored if your profile is linked with your face in a photo.

Sure, you can create a set of 'face templates' that may or not be linked to a profile, and then match against them as long as you have some meaningful way to use the matching templates without a profile.

Re: Facebook’s Face Recognition Tech Goes on Trial

#40
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We could soon have security cameras in stores that identify people as they shop,” Already deployed. Here's a report by a retailer who installed a face recognition system.[1] Names anonymized. “We now know within seconds of a person walking in the store if they’ve previously been caught stealing from us. ... Suppose Johnny Johnson is caught shoplifting at a Store-Mart branch. He’s detained, photographed, and given a…

And of course, your face will be run through this database and many others when you apply for a job, or a credit card.

Of course. See this marketing video from FaceFirst, which powered the retail application mentioned above.[1] They offer cloud-based facial recognition as a service. "FaceFirst maintains a massive, centrally managed database and server farm at our headquarters."

Since much of their input comes from video, they get lots of pictures of each individual and combine them. This improves accuracy. They use the Cognitec face matching algorithm.

WalMart tried FaceFirst in 2015, and gave up on it.[2] "We were looking for a concrete business rationale ... It didn’t have the ROI."

[1] http://www.facefirst.com/ [2] http://fortune.com/2015/11/09/wal-mart-facial-recognition/

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