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Germany: Facebook must destroy its facial recognition database
- Irishsteve 14y agoIf I remember correctly you ran the risk of having your Facebook account closed if you made a freedom of information request via it's Irish subsidiary for all that paper work linked to your account. Therefore I'd imagine a similar response will be generated by FB if they are forced to comply with the latest complaint.
- swang 14y agoDo you actually have a link to that? I don't recall reading that Facebook would close your account if you requested information about yourself. That seems really punitive.
- jamesaguilar 14y agoI think it's meant to be punitive, or maybe preventative. Basically you are making yourself more expensive for them than you are worth. They probably reasoned that if you've made this request once, you're much more likely to make it again.
- mtgx 14y agoDamn. I should've asked for it before I deleted my account then, just to piss them off.
- rmc 14y agoIf they still store information on you, you are still entitled to see it. (Knowing Facebook, they probably still have the information). If you are not in US or Canada, you are covered by the EU law and you are legally required to get a copy of all personal information they hold on you.
- AkThhhpppt 14y agoCorrection: they're legally required to give it to you - if you ask.
- StevenRayOrr 14y agoOut of sheer curiousity, does anyone know the options available to Canadians? I know that we have a Privacy Act that is designed to get information out of governmental institutions, but how would a Canadian citizen go about finding what FaceBook has on them?
- rmc 14y agoif you made a freedom of information request Clarification, in Ireland "Freedom of Information" is for government bodies. It's "Data Protection" law (which is the personal data of you held by anyone, government & private companies)
- Irishsteve 14y agoThanks!
- rmc 14y agoTwas quite clever of Facebook to set up in Ireland (and not just for the 12½% corporation tax rate). It can be a large employer in a small fish, and the Irish government is desparate to be seen to be doing something about jobs (hence any job losses from a household name would be very embarassing). As a result, I wouldn't be too suprised if some squeeze was placed on the Data Protection Office. "Oh you want more funding... Well..." I wonder if this is one of the reasons the EU wants to overhaul the Data Protection law so that EU citizens can complain to their national data protection office, not just the one the company is in.
- aggronn 14y agoNot wrong, but Facebook is hardly the only big fish in Ireland. Most large US corporations locate their European HQs there.
- gsnedders 14y agoFacebook has offices in a number of EU countries, including (but not limited to) offices in London (UK), Hamburg (Germany), Brussels (Belgium), Amsterdam (Netherlands), Paris (France), Madrid (Spain), and Stockholm (Sweden).
- chmod775 14y agoWhy can't Germany just raid the Facebook HQ in the US for violating local law? Isn't that essentially the same that the US did at the dotcom mansion?
- sanxiyn 14y agoDotcom was arrested by New Zealand Police, cooperating with FBI. Copyright is governed by international agreements, one of which is Berne Convention, first signed in 1886. New Zealand and US are Berne Convention signatories. To be essentially the same, first US would sign Data Protection Directive, then Germany would request FBI to cooperate, and FBI would raid Facebook HQ.
- ihsw 14y agoBecause Germany doesn't respond to the beck and call of the RIAA/MPAA.
- drone 14y agoNo, they respond to the beck and call of GEMA.
- fleitz 14y agoThe answer is because they respect the rule of law, a better analogy would be why can't germany use drone strikes or extraordinary rendition against Zuckerberg.
- chmod775 14y agoWe can't do any drone-strikes because we do not have drones (that are equipped with firearms). We just bough some from the US but I do not think that they have arrived already. Would be interesting to know how many parts in these drones are actually made in Germany.
- rmc 14y agoThat's not what happened. Kim Dotcom was arrested by NZ police. Just about all extradition treaties require "double criminality", where the person is extradited on a thing that's a crime in both countries. The USA does not have these data protection laws, so the USA is highly unlike to extradite to a country where that's illegal.
- hastur 14y agoOf course they realize that the NSA already has a full copy? You might think: so what, I'm not a terrorist. But think twice, because people opposing US interests (and the interests of some of the most powerful lobbies, like MPAA & RIAA) are increasingly being afforded the treatment you'd expect for a terror suspect.
- chmod775 14y agoWho cares? There's no risk they are going to sell it or try to make some dirty money using it in other ways.
- jonknee 14y ago> Who cares? There's no risk they are going to sell it or try to make some dirty money using it in other ways. What makes you think that? All the big telecom companies make "dirty money" by processing the millions of warrantless wiretap and information requests. Facebook probably already does too, it's not much of a difference between that and utilizing a face database.
- jlgreco 14y agoOf course they realize that. But what can they do about that?
- philwelch 14y ago> But think twice, because people opposing US interests (and the interests of some of the most powerful lobbies, like MPAA & RIAA) are increasingly being afforded the treatment you'd expect for a terror suspect. [citation needed]
- daveman 14y agoIt's fascinating to watch how tech companies react to restrictive EU privacy laws. Many of the EU requirements (e.g. 'right to be forgotten', mandatory opt-in for cookies) could become a real hindrance for companies that want to build intelligent services and minimized user experiences. Call me crazy, but it seems like when you get to use a free service or website that costs many millions of dollars to develop, giving the company access to your data is a fairly small price to pay. I'm waiting for one of these legal actions to cause a company like Facebook to just shut down their service in the local area, and leave a landing page with the email addresses of all the politicians who provoked the outage.
- thinkingisfun 14y ago"I'm waiting for one of these legal actions to cause a company like Facebook to just shut down their service in the local area, and leave a landing page with the email addresses of all the politicians who provoked the outage." Same here! They'd be heroes overnight.
- felipemnoa 14y agoWho? The politicians?
- Roboprog 14y agoIndeed, 17 year olds don't vote in most countries. Their inconvenience is of little concern to me.
- nitrogen 14y agoIt is the epiotome of arrogance to serve your own interests by trampling those of others, regardless of how annoying you find their demographic to be. By this attitude, 17 year olds are perfectly within their rights to say "their privacy is of little concern to me" about your age group, and act accordingly.
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- andyl 14y agoI don't like the Facebook facial recognition thing either. Or when someone tags me on photos that they have uploaded. I think its creepy when someone else posts my photo, then I start getting comments on it. This should be opt-in, not opt-out.
- forgotusername 14y agoI wonder how the German data protection office might respond if they realized Google probably have the largest database of images in the world, is trying to put cameras in everyone's glasses, and already owns 2 face recognition companies (Neven Vision, Pittpatt)
- mike-cardwell 14y agoThe tone of your comment implies that you think that Germany is targetting Facebook unfairly. Read up on what happened with Google Street View in Germany. This is not a German issue anyway. It's an EU issue. And the problem is companies compiling data on users without their permission (opt out rather than opt in). If users aren't willing to opt in to your data collection, then you're not offering something worth the trade. Facebook and Google rely on peoples ignorance to make money.
- ZENmotherfucker 14y ago>If users aren't willing to opt in to your data collection, then you're not offering something worth the trade. Facebook and Google rely on peoples ignorance to make money. Ignorance or apathy? And if apathetic, then for those people, it likely is worth the trade. If they're not willing to opt-out, then they don't give a shit. Right? Cuts both ways. Regardless, I think it's hard to effectively argue the idea that you have a "right" for others not to know something, in this case personal information. If you don't want somebody to know something, then don't tell them.
- thirdsun 14y agoI can't talk for the rest of the EU but in Germany privacy issues tend to get blown out of proportion - the media coverage during the street view controversy was rather ridiculous. Average, non-technical people almost thought Google would drive through their backyards. It's ok to disagree with Google's and Facebook's behaviour and it's ok to take measures but I wish the media would focus on balanced and objective coverage, educating people rather than calling for drama and hysteria.
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- danso 14y agoI just don't see how FB currently gets that much value out of its facial recognition DB. As far as I can tell, as an end-user, it makes it easier to tag people because FB will suggest named tags (sometimes hilariously wrong). But this is a minor convenience. If I really do want to tag a photo, then I'm already in a curation mindset and willing to put up with the precious second it takes to type in the first two-three characters of a friend's name. At this point, FB, with those two characters, has enough information to make a 95% accurate guess...because it also has my entire history of interactions with friends, including all past tagging behavior. It obviously can derive a prediction that weights more recent tagging behavior (on the premise that I'm likely to have hung out with the same friends as I did last week)...and bingo, by the time I've typed the third character, Facebook has it narrowed down to the right person. So why even bother keeping the facial recognition data? ...I'm not so naive to think that there aren't other applications of this facial-recognition data. I'm just pointing out that FB has nearly all the non-visual data needed to guess who is in a photo without applying any computer-vision techniques. And that non-visual data (the history of a user's interactions) has way more predictive value on behavior than a facial-recognition DB... So given that the general public is more disturbed by things relating to physical appearance, if I were FB, I'd just give up this fight and carry on collecting all the non-visual data that they have so far. * edit: Along the same lines...this decision seems to be based on how FB collected this data without users explicit consent. Well, under this argument, doesn't FB collect interaction data without user consent? Say my friend Bob continually posts on my wall, pokes me, sends me direct messages, etc. FB, without my consent, will have enough interaction data to peg me as Bob's special confidante...without any interaction on my part. Isn't this the complaint with the face data? That my friends can tag my face and thus give FB a decent idea of my appearance? Well, my friends can also give FB a decent idea of my preferences in a variety of arenas by how they converse and interact with me...so if opt-in is the issue, isn't all of FB data up for destruction?
- tonfa 14y ago> Along the same lines...this decision seems to be based on how FB collected this data without users explicit consent. Well, under this argument, doesn't FB collect interaction data without user consent? Biometric data is usually a much more touchy subject than anything else. But yes there are also people who think that interaction data (logs) collection should be opt-in.
- RexRollman 14y agoSometimes I wonder if the US Government will somehow use Facebook photos to track people, even if they themselves don't have a Facebook account. I find the idea of something like that creepy.
- salimmadjd 14y agoEvery database out there can be used for evil. Whether if it's facial fingerprint or anything else. I never liked Face.com and facebook's decision to buy them. The ability of a photograph being used to track me anywhere there is a camera is not the future I want to be part of.
- spoiledtechie 14y agoIve said it once, twice and many other times. I do believe Germany is probably by far one of the most advanced political governments there are. I so welcome their input and applaud their effort!
- mike_ivanov 14y agoOr else!
- gioele 14y ago«database of faces collected in Germany» "Collected in Germany". It is nice to see how politics and law keep applying physical verbs to non-physical infrastructure. If you ask around you will see that there are almost as many definition of "done XXX in contry YYY" as the number of country out there: some national law see it as "the client is in YYY", other as "the server is in YYY", other as "the infrastructure is in YYY", other as "both the client and the server are in YYY" and so on. It is very hard to be a law-abiding citizen or business on the Internet when there are heaps of contrasting laws.