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The point of this particular article is that you don't even need to be on Facebook. Your image is bound to be captured, perhaps only in the background in a pub

by jdhzzz 10y ago

The point of this particular article is that you don't even need to be on Facebook. Your image is bound to be captured, perhaps only in the background in a public space, by someone who is. Your face will be recognized and it will become part of your "public record". No amount of opting out will prevent this. Perhaps going full Amish will, but even that simply pushes back the timeline.

libraryatnight 10y ago
"FYI man, alright. You could sit at home, and do like absolutely nothing, and your name goes through like 17 computers a day. 1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now. He's livin' large. We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless!" lol i used to love this quote in Hackers and your point made me recall it.
pmoriarty 10y ago
On Facebook and other social media websites, people regularly volunteer to identify their friends in photos. That does not happen with ordinary street surveillance footage, as far as I know. So you might have pictures of you taken by street surveillance cameras as you walk around in big cities, but your face isn't ordinarily going to be recognized by anyone.
- jdormit 10y ago
  These days, I'd be willing to bet that "ordinary street surveillance" uses facial recognition algorithms. It wouldn't be as effective as FB's, because FB has an enormous stream of training data coming in all the time. However, that could change if law enforcement got access to FB's data - hence this article.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    Facial recognition software can only recognize you if your face is already in the database and identified as you. It's not going to magically know your identity otherwise, no matter how sophisticated it is. On the other hand, I guess it could do some inference, such as: person X seen at location Y is also seen going in to residence Z every evening and coming out of the same residence every morning for the last 6 months, therefore there's a high probability that this person's address is residence Z, and since John Doe is the only person registered as living in that residence, person X is probably John Doe, etc.
    - jdormit 10y ago
      > Facial recognition software can only recognize you if your face is already in the database and identified as you. Right, which is exactly what would happen if law enforcement/governments could access FB's database.
      - mamon 10y ago
        Government already has a huge database of photos with name tags attached: the photos you submit when you want to get a passport, drivers license, or any other form of ID.

by jdhzzz 10y ago

libraryatnight 10y ago

"FYI man, alright. You could sit at home, and do like absolutely nothing, and your name goes through like 17 computers a day. 1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now. He's livin' large. We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless!" lol i used to love this quote in Hackers and your point made me recall it.

pmoriarty 10y ago

On Facebook and other social media websites, people regularly volunteer to identify their friends in photos. That does not happen with ordinary street surveillance footage, as far as I know. So you might have pictures of you taken by street surveillance cameras as you walk around in big cities, but your face isn't ordinarily going to be recognized by anyone.

jdormit 10y ago
These days, I'd be willing to bet that "ordinary street surveillance" uses facial recognition algorithms. It wouldn't be as effective as FB's, because FB has an enormous stream of training data coming in all the time. However, that could change if law enforcement got access to FB's data - hence this article.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  Facial recognition software can only recognize you if your face is already in the database and identified as you. It's not going to magically know your identity otherwise, no matter how sophisticated it is. On the other hand, I guess it could do some inference, such as: person X seen at location Y is also seen going in to residence Z every evening and coming out of the same residence every morning for the last 6 months, therefore there's a high probability that this person's address is residence Z, and since John Doe is the only person registered as living in that residence, person X is probably John Doe, etc.
  - jdormit 10y ago
    > Facial recognition software can only recognize you if your face is already in the database and identified as you. Right, which is exactly what would happen if law enforcement/governments could access FB's database.
    - mamon 10y ago
      Government already has a huge database of photos with name tags attached: the photos you submit when you want to get a passport, drivers license, or any other form of ID.