

Google+ launches opt-in "Find my face" feature - asto
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-releases-opt-in-find-my-face-facial-recognition-tool/2011/12/09/gIQAlUQ6hO_story.html

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ChuckMcM
Ok this is a bit, uh, unsettling. For 'find my face' to work they have to
already classify your face in images regardless of your 'opt in' status. And
of course if you turn it on it pretty much instantly knows which pictures have
your face in them.

I would like to see the first national security letter that demands Google
hand over all pictures with the following 'face' in them. But I won't because
the first rule of NSLs is you don't talk about NSLs.

I hope that when it gets abused by the government Google rips it out rather
than allowing itself to be used in that way.

(apparently I woke up on the paranoid side of the bed today)

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resnamen
The same paranoia applies to all photo hosting services that can link
photographs to accounts. (shrug)

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rjd
The difference is that other photo sharing sites don't hold a huge amount of
behaviour and associative data about you.

To put it in a context you have to consider the fear involved when countries
like China have already been caught breaching Google systems.

It might not mean much to us westerns as generally we aren't afraid of your
government and it has at least they have some due process. Many totalitarian
governments don't and from what the media spread they aren't afraid to arrerst
everyone you associate with as well.

You can pretend that it isn't happening, but it is, and china isn't alone.
Processes like this lead to industrialised abuses of power and perseuction of
innocent people that have may have signed upto services without considering
the full impact of just being snapped in a photo with someone else they barely
know... and what evidence do they have this person is guilty? well like any
normal person they probably read up on the news, where shocked about a few
things, and all of a sudden you can pull items out of context and have a
history of being involving with undesired behaviour.

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awolf
I'm glad to see Google taking this route when adding new features to its
social network.

I am _infuriated_ by Facebook opting me in to every new sharing feature when
they add it. It is a constant maintenance headache for people like me who want
to simply have a presence on Facebook without participating on a day to day
basis.

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atarian
Could this mean in the future that simply showing your face in a picture will
provide the world the means to find all sorts of information about you?
Imagine a future where high-resolution cameras are common and anyone's
identity can be drawn from a photo. On one hand, perhaps it could be used to
quickly identify criminals. Public cameras or bots scouring publicly posted
photographs might alert officials to recent uploads helping to pinpoint their
location. In an entirely different scenario, the people participating in
protests would be doxed; perhaps their frequency would be recorded somewhere.
Soon it would become obvious who the loudest voices are.

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mdwrigh2
Side note: Not even WaPo can seem to get it right. The unofficial slogan is
"Don't be evil" not "Do no evil", which is what they have as one of their
photo captions.

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jrockway
Is it really respectful of privacy rights to allow me to opt-out of tagging?
People should be able to photograph me, attach my name, and share with their
friends without my intervention. What happens in public is public.

