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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

#91

Post by dclowd9901 »

kardos wrote: post #21
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…

That's a really hard battle to fight, even for those of us who understand the full implications. The entire population is not going to drop facebook overnight, it does deliver some sort of value to them despite it's heavy privacy price. I'm beginning to believe that the answer is to simply devalue all that information. We can do it in some contexts on the technical side, for example, rotating passwords devalues stole…

You don't need to drop Facebook -- just turn privacy settings so that your face can't be identified publicly or beyond 1 degree of connection. People should know how to do at least that.

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

#92

Post by ryangittins »

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.

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

#95

Post by jdimov10 »

LunaSea wrote: post #90
jdimov10 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My full name and address are already publicly available in countless places, if you had any legitimate interest you should have been able to find them in less time than it took you to write that comment. Btw., so are yours.

Sure I don't pretend that that mine are no accessible but this is most of the time a conscious choice. I still have privacy but I just choose what information I make public. Also for example my address is probably nowhere public because I didn't choose to publish it.

All I'm saying is, sure, privacy is comfortable and we are fond of it and we all have our insecurities, BUT... it's going away, whether we like that or not. And really, it never actually did exist. But that's okay because we should still be able to get along just fine without it (to the extent that any people on Earth ever did get along...) Moreover, I feel that we would actually be better off and able to move forward faster by giving up on concepts like privacy and security.

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

#96

Post by bduerst »

kardos wrote: post #89
bduerst wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think is more phobia about technology than an actual problem. I get that this is a radical view on HN, but when topics like this come up, it's always slippery slopes and fantastic nightmare scenarios (like 3D printing your face). I feel like we're in the 1980's debating over how to handle traffic laws for our flying cars in 2010 just because someone built one.

> it's always slippery slopes and fantastic nightmare scenarios It already is a nightmare scenario for some [1]. How bad should we let things get before we try to fix them? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11721600

That HN comment you linked to is _still_ just a nightmare scenario.

If you read the article, you would see that they are lying about what happened. Even your question, based on incorrect information, is implying a slippery slope.

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

#97

Post by germanier »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #91
kardos wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really hard battle to fight, even for those of us who understand the full implications. The entire population is not going to drop facebook overnight, it does deliver some sort of value to them despite it's heavy privacy price. I'm beginning to believe that the answer is to simply devalue all that information. We can do it in some contexts on the technical side, for example, rotating passwords devalues stole…

You don't need to drop Facebook -- just turn privacy settings so that your face can't be identified publicly or beyond 1 degree of connection. People should know how to do at least that .

That doesn't really help if Facebook is in it - and let's be honest, what stops them from mining the photos set to "private"?

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

#98

Post by germanier »

redmaverick wrote: post #72
weavie wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's a good point. But the only generation that's going to be affected is the facebook generation.The current teenage gen will just stick to whatsapp/kik conversations or snapchat and won't advertise themselves like fb gen did.

In that case analyze the photos sent on snapchat or whatever network is cool today. The problem is not only photos posted publicly (though it's most visible there).

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

#99

Post by kardos »

btown wrote: post #84
kardos wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really hard battle to fight, even for those of us who understand the full implications. The entire population is not going to drop facebook overnight, it does deliver some sort of value to them despite it's heavy privacy price. I'm beginning to believe that the answer is to simply devalue all that information. We can do it in some contexts on the technical side, for example, rotating passwords devalues stole…

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 can we do that fundamentally makes assembling troves of personal information useless? Poisoning it with plausible garbage might be part of the answer. Also the answer /might/ be regulatory. HIPAA has teeth, we could add something else with teeth. Or perhaps an insurance-driven approach: if holding personal information was a big liability in the event of a leak, it would be prudent to keep as little as possible.

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

#100

Post by qaq »

randomgyatwork wrote: post #56
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…

To the best of my knowledge, I've removed all the pictures associated with my name from the internet... with the exception of LinkedIn.

Cool none will ever mine LinkedIn for personal data
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