ktlight
2nd August 2011, 07:49
"One-third of the people on the streets can now be identified using a smartphone camera, facial recognition software and Facebook.
I've wanted to write an article about the incredible danger of upcoming facial recognition search engines for a while. Very soon, these search engines will be able to find every picture and video on the web with your face on it (foreground/background). That means tens or hundreds or even thousands of pictures and videos of your entire life could be found by anyone with a picture (or name) of you.
When you go outside in the very near future, you'll never know who'll point a camera at your face. They'll then immediately see your entire life, personal details, all your interests and all your social network messages. Whenever they make a picture/video (along with your gps location), it will immediately be posted online for everyone to see. For example, by the next individual with a camera phone.
(I'm not even talking about audio recog by your voice and text recog by your writing style)
Legislation against it is probably as useless as the legislation against piracy. Everything can be hosted anonymously in other countries, or peer-to-peer.
The unprecedented danger of all this recording and identifying is that we'll no longer be able to be controversial or make mistakes, both online and offline. The result: the end of what is called 'progress'.
A 'mistake' is just a human invention, but most people don't realize that and judge you for it. Including the people in power.
Quote:
"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one." - Elbert Hubbard
"Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes." - Confucius (They'll become more than crimes)
"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." - Scott Adams
"If you're not making mistakes, you're not doing anything." - John Wooden
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas Edison
End quote
A new study now shows that one-third of the people 'offline' can already be identified online because of the facial tagging mechanism on Facebook.
"Armed with nothing but a snapshot, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh successfully identified about one-third of the people they tested, using a powerful facial-recognition technology recently acquired by Google." -WSJ
"The study showed that in 27 percent of cases it was also possible to, very simply, work out the first five digits of a social security number - solely from harvested information." - Techeye
http://www.techeye.net/security/researchers-work-out-social-security-from-facebook-face-id
"It may also affect how we interact with each other. Through natural evolution, human beings have evolved mechanisms to assign and manage trust in face-to-face interactions. Will we rely on our instincts or on our devices, when mobile phones can predict personal and sensitive information about a person?" - PR Newswire
http://www.sys-con.com/node/1928431
At the moment, there is no publicly available mobile app that recognizes all people tagged on Facebook (or the whole web), but an app called Recognizr already let's users choose to be recognizable on the streets by other Recognizr users. So this gives an idea of where we are heading:"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QBLKBYrgvk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QBLKBYrgvk&feature=player_embedded
I've wanted to write an article about the incredible danger of upcoming facial recognition search engines for a while. Very soon, these search engines will be able to find every picture and video on the web with your face on it (foreground/background). That means tens or hundreds or even thousands of pictures and videos of your entire life could be found by anyone with a picture (or name) of you.
When you go outside in the very near future, you'll never know who'll point a camera at your face. They'll then immediately see your entire life, personal details, all your interests and all your social network messages. Whenever they make a picture/video (along with your gps location), it will immediately be posted online for everyone to see. For example, by the next individual with a camera phone.
(I'm not even talking about audio recog by your voice and text recog by your writing style)
Legislation against it is probably as useless as the legislation against piracy. Everything can be hosted anonymously in other countries, or peer-to-peer.
The unprecedented danger of all this recording and identifying is that we'll no longer be able to be controversial or make mistakes, both online and offline. The result: the end of what is called 'progress'.
A 'mistake' is just a human invention, but most people don't realize that and judge you for it. Including the people in power.
Quote:
"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one." - Elbert Hubbard
"Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes." - Confucius (They'll become more than crimes)
"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." - Scott Adams
"If you're not making mistakes, you're not doing anything." - John Wooden
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas Edison
End quote
A new study now shows that one-third of the people 'offline' can already be identified online because of the facial tagging mechanism on Facebook.
"Armed with nothing but a snapshot, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh successfully identified about one-third of the people they tested, using a powerful facial-recognition technology recently acquired by Google." -WSJ
"The study showed that in 27 percent of cases it was also possible to, very simply, work out the first five digits of a social security number - solely from harvested information." - Techeye
http://www.techeye.net/security/researchers-work-out-social-security-from-facebook-face-id
"It may also affect how we interact with each other. Through natural evolution, human beings have evolved mechanisms to assign and manage trust in face-to-face interactions. Will we rely on our instincts or on our devices, when mobile phones can predict personal and sensitive information about a person?" - PR Newswire
http://www.sys-con.com/node/1928431
At the moment, there is no publicly available mobile app that recognizes all people tagged on Facebook (or the whole web), but an app called Recognizr already let's users choose to be recognizable on the streets by other Recognizr users. So this gives an idea of where we are heading:"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QBLKBYrgvk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QBLKBYrgvk&feature=player_embedded