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Russia’s new FindFace app identifies strangers in a crowd with 70% accuracy

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Russia’s new FindFace app identifies strangers in a crowd with 70% accuracy

#111

Post by greggman »

jernfrost wrote: post #104

This is just one of many indicators that Edward Snowden is right about the importance of privacy in this day and age. With so much of our lives online, and the ability of technology to interpret that information, allowing spying agencies free pass to all your online data, is the equivalent of making it legal for them to install camera's in every room in your house and office. There needs to be strong privacy rules an…

I agree with you .. but, the first thing that comes to mind is comparing the futility of staying private with the futility of stopping piracy.

Most tech people seem to believe piracy (music, video) is effectively unstoppable. What makes the end of privacy any different?

Of course I want privacy. For current sized cameras I'm pretty sure none are on (not 100% sure though) but as they get smaller and cheaper and people post more and more photos and eventually livecast their lives or at least large chunks of it (it seems like coming eventually whether we want it to or not), how will we stop the end of privacy anymore than we can stop piracy?

Re: Russia’s new FindFace app identifies strangers in a crowd with 70% accuracy

#112

Post by bsenftner »

3v3rt wrote: post #80
clentaminator wrote: post #24

I wonder how effective systems like https://cvdazzle.com/ are against this. Will we all be putting on masks or face-paint in the future when we go outside?

Whenever I see some of these 'countermeasures' I usually run them through some high end commercial face recognition algorithms I have access to. In many of the cases the countermeasures are completely ineffective. They may fool some things like opencv DIY algorithms, but not the expensive stuff :). For those the most effective strategy is to just tilt your head to the left or right a lot, though that will possibly gi…

just shave off your eyebrows, or makeup to make them appear gone. Most (nearly all) facial feature finders expect eyebrows of some kind. (I work in facial recognition.)

Re: Russia’s new FindFace app identifies strangers in a crowd with 70% accuracy

#113

Post by axelfreeman »

If this will be a problem and it's getting abused it will be illegal. It's also illegal to clone a human from your hairs.

I don't get it. I can also search in a phone book for names or i can contact goverment help to find. The problem is what happens after you got the information and this is regulated in laws.

If your data is not on the internet it doesn't mean you are invisible.

Re: Russia’s new FindFace app identifies strangers in a crowd with 70% accuracy

#114

Post by sambalbadjak »

jdimov10 wrote: post #69
hack_edu wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. > Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or announce that you expect to get downvoted. Consider the guidelines regarding worthwhile contributions next time, please. :) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

My comments are anything but boring.

Did you read any philosophical paper on this issue? I'm interested in reading more about your view.

Re: Russia’s new FindFace app identifies strangers in a crowd with 70% accuracy

#115

Post by cm3 »

ryangittins wrote: post #92
cm3 wrote: post #74

With all the data being collected, has anyone been able to use it to defend themselves based on location and time recorded? I tend to think that if we're recording all of it, it ought to be immutable and sealed so that one can at least use it as evidence, but the cynic in me thinks this isn't something the governing powers have any interest in allowing.

I think if (more likely, when) we get to the point where people can have an alibi in this way, it will quickly turn sour. When you're accused of a crime and you can't be located during that time, it'll be used to make you look guilty—not just neutral.

Hadn't thought about that. Reminds me that I don't use Facebook or WhatsApp or LinkedIn.

Re: Russia’s new FindFace app identifies strangers in a crowd with 70% accuracy

#116

Post by pavel_lishin »

kardos wrote: post #99
btown wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For your point about face recognition, this art project may be of interest to you: https://cvdazzle.com/ A very interesting idea that email privacy might realistically turn into a steganography problem - how do you make it so the real content is indistinguishable from fake content, and given that this is imperfect, make it so that all but the most sophisticated attackers wouldn't be able to tell that a hidden message…

That sounds a lot like security by obscurity, one blog post later and the world can distinguish the two. Cvdazzle is unlikey to be the answer, it's just today's CAPTCHA to slow down face recognition, tomorrow's recognition will cut through that We need a more radical solution to devalue our private information. Consider by analogy cell phones: IMEI blacklists (in theory) fundamentally devalue stealing phones. What ca…

> if holding personal information was a big liability in the event of a leak, it would be prudent to keep as little as possible.

But this kills the social network, and the cloud photo app, and a lot of other businesses.

edit: nevermind, I think I misunderstood the suggestion. kardos's reply makes a lot of sense.

Re: Russia’s new FindFace app identifies strangers in a crowd with 70% accuracy

#117

Post by jernfrost »

jdimov10 wrote: post #51

Technology increasingly exposes the superficial nature of concepts like privacy and security. In nature, these things simply do not exist. They are also completely non-essential to human well-being. Our emotional attachment to such concepts is not doing us any favours. Also, you can't be rooting for transparency AND privacy at the same time. You have to give up on one of these, and when you think about it, you have t…

I disagree, I think you can strike a balance between privacy and transparency. Sometimes they strengthen each other. I am from Norway, and I've lived in the US, and I would say that in many cases both privacy and transparency is stronger in Norway. E.g. in the US my credit history is inaccessible to me. I don't know who is accessing it. Yet this information is shared willy nilly with other businesses. So there is neither transparency on its usage nor privacy for me.

In contrasts in Norway, by law, it is far more restricted what the credit card companies can record about me. Whenever somebody requests information about me, by law I have to be sent exactly the same information. This provides both increased privacy and transparency. I get to know who is trying to find out stuff about me, and I got control over what sort of information is shared about me. If what is being sent out looks wrong I can contact the credit card companies and inform them about that.

Likewise you can look up anybody's tax returns in Norway. You can't look at the details however. But it is a great tool for transparency in that it allows you to check if e.g. government officials or others have way more income than they should be having. However whenever you request this information, people having those tax returns will be informed that you requested that information. This helps protect your privacy as you can't look at the neighbors tax returns without looking rather stupid and nosy.

Re: Russia’s new FindFace app identifies strangers in a crowd with 70% accuracy

#118

Post by pavel_lishin »

weavie wrote: post #42
axx wrote: post #9

That's the thing with personal pictures online. Most people can't imagine what is going to happen in the future. People on Hacker News well understand this issue, but ask your non-computer friends and family. If you'd tell them, that you can take a picture of a random person and search that picture out of a pool of people and get their contact info (as a private company / random programmer with enough data), they won…

The thing is, under a certain age everyone is doing it. When this current teenage generation grows up and gets into leadership positions - especially politics, they are all going to have their entire upbringing exposed for the whole nation to see. The few that haven't will be viewed with cynicism and will most likely not be accepted by the population. The population will be voting for their leaders based on how they…

> When this current teenage generation grows up and gets into leadership positions - especially politics, they are all going to have their entire upbringing exposed for the whole nation to see.

But that whole generation will be in the same situation. Everyone will have had to deal with it; embarassing/compromising college-era party photos will just be a thing that nearly everyone has dealt with.

Decades ago, having had an abortion or a child out of wedlock was a mortal social sin. Today, it doesn't matter.

Re: Russia’s new FindFace app identifies strangers in a crowd with 70% accuracy

#119

Post by qaq »

dangrossman wrote: post #107
qaq wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really want to work for a place like that?

Employers routinely subject applicants to personality tests, IQ tests, fitness tests for jobs that have nothing to do with manual labor (essentially age/gender discrimination), background checks, credit checks even when the job doesn't involve handling money, and yes, looking them up on social media. Do people really want to work for these places? Yes, because they need to pay their rent, and don't have the nestegg o…

This holds true for 3d world countries in US for 90% of people the only reason to be in this position is one's own choices.

Re: Russia’s new FindFace app identifies strangers in a crowd with 70% accuracy

#120

Post by drdeca »

jdimov10 wrote: post #51

Technology increasingly exposes the superficial nature of concepts like privacy and security. In nature, these things simply do not exist. They are also completely non-essential to human well-being. Our emotional attachment to such concepts is not doing us any favours. Also, you can't be rooting for transparency AND privacy at the same time. You have to give up on one of these, and when you think about it, you have t…

Some Reasoning:

a) Even if all information about every person is publicly accessible, none of us will know everything about all of us (Us being humanity). Some things about some people would be known by more people. For example, more people would know that the president is the president than whether I got a haircut any given day. Indeed, more people would know that the president exists than would know that I exist. There is a limited amount of attention, and not enough to give attention to everything, so some things must have more attention on them than others.

b) Negative attention can harm someone. Harassment hurts.

c) having information about someone can make it easier to focus the attention of others on that person, including negative attention. This is true even when the people whose attention is in question already could have accessed the information beforehand, but haven't. Perhaps even especially true.

Conclusion) Having all information available about all persons makes it easier for those who can direct people's attention to direct negative attention against those who they wish to do so against, and therefore increases their ability to harm those people, and therefore increases their power over them.

So a total lack of privacy makes those with power over attention more powerful.

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