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Face Recognition — Clever Or Just Plain Creepy? 187

Posted by Soulskill from the can't-it-be-both dept.
Simson writes "Beth Rosenberg and I published a fun story today about our experiences with the new face recognition that's built into both iPhoto '09 and Google's new Picasa system. The skinny: iPhoto is fun, Google is creepy. The real difference, we think, is that iPhoto runs on your system and has you name people with your 'friendly' names. Picasa, on the other hand, runs on Google's servers and has you identify everybody with their email addresses. Of course, email addresses are unique and can be cross-correlated between different users. And then, even more disturbing, after you've tagged all your friends and family, Google tries to get you to tag all of the strangers in your photos. Ick."
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Face Recognition — Clever Or Just Plain Creepy? More

Face Recognition — Clever Or Just Plain Creepy?

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  • Slow news day? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gavron ( 1300111 ) on Saturday February 28, 2009 @03:36AM (#27021195)
    How did this make it onto /.? This isn't news, it's not new, and it's not technically on the cusp of anything except *yawn* sleep.

    When you choose to run your photos through facial recognition software (or give them to others who may do the same) you should expect .. ta da.. that they will run them through that software.

    The criteria for success includes Facial Identification (figuring out where the face is), Facial Recognition (figuring out if the face matches one on file), and some method of Facial Labeling ("tagging" that face with an identifier).

    Calling google "creepy" (pejorative nontechnical evaluation) doesn't give it the credit for doing all three parts correctly. Not liking that google's choice of identifier is more unique than "LAST, FIRST" or "FIRST LAST" is a personal foible, not a problem with the technology.

    Was this a slow "news" day?

    E

    • Re:Slow news day? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Saturday February 28, 2009 @05:14AM (#27021517) Homepage
      "Calling google "creepy" (pejorative nontechnical evaluation) doesn't give it the credit for doing all three parts correctly. Not liking that google's choice of identifier is more unique than "LAST, FIRST" or "FIRST LAST" is a personal foible, not a problem with the technology."

      No, that's shortsighted. There are criteria used to evaluate success that aren't technical - that a superb technical job has been done to get an unwanted result is neither here no there, the result is still unwanted.

      That 'personal foible' - Google are perfectly capable of understanding unique ids, therefore they have chosen email for a reason. It's not too hard to extrapolate a scenario where they have location information and email addresses, and are therefore able to sell location-based marketing information about people who have been entered into their system without them even knowing. All it takes is one friend who doesn't realise the implications, or one business using services for free, and you're on whether you wanted to be or not.

      Of course, that's already the case the moment you've been entered into someone's online service-based address book. But combined with your image and location information...I find that disturbing. I don't know exactly why I do, but it's something that I feel disquiet about.

      Cheers,
      Ian
      • "No, that's shortsighted. There are criteria used to evaluate success that aren't technical [snip] I find that disturbing. I don't know exactly why I do, but it's something that I feel disquiet about."

        And yet the point you are arguing against was "[Not liking googles identifier] is a personal foible, not a problem with the technology" - now take out your government issued drivers license and examine it closely. If you have a problem with unwanted marketing do as I do and dump it in the recycling bin on t

      • Re:Slow news day? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Improv ( 2467 ) <pgunn01@gmail.com> on Saturday February 28, 2009 @09:17AM (#27022223) Homepage Journal

        Unwanted to whom? Not all geeks care that much about privacy. There may be a loud portion that's always talking about PGP and privacy plugins for pidgin, including a (much smaller) contingent that hides away from cameras in real life and tries to obscure their features there. There's also a fair set of just-as-clued-and-geeky folk who are resigned to privacy being not worth the pain, as well as those who value radical openness and push for far less privacy than tradition has given humanity in the past.

        • Re:Slow news day? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by whiplashx ( 837931 ) on Saturday February 28, 2009 @09:38AM (#27022313)
          Hear hear. I value "radical openness," and it seems to be a minority opinion sometimes. I don't mind if strangers can find me; I find it interesting to see a picture of an author or a friend of a friend that I've heard lots about. And I don't mind if people do the same for me. Mod parent up!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by vux984 ( 928602 )

          Unwanted to whom?

          Unwanted to me.

          I don't care if you actively want this.
          I don't care if you simply don't care.
          But I don't want this.

          All 3 of us can be satisfied: make it explicitly opt-in and enforce it.

          Then:
          Then I don't have to be in it.
          People who don't care can flip a coin.
          People who actively want it can run around stuffing their own information into any portal that will accept it.

          Why are you being hostile to the ones that don't want it?

          • Why are you being hostile to the ones that don't want it?

            Why go through all that extra work when they can get away with what they do now?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by spinkham ( 56603 )

          I fall into two of the above camps.. I have sensitive work information, and need PGP,OTR, full disk encryption and the like for things related to that. However, I also use Facebook, Twitter, and much of my email and IM is in the clear, as it's not worth getting my non-technical contacts set up.

          Both privacy and oppenness are important to me. It's important that I get to choose the tradeoffs myself for each type of information and communication.

      • I don't know exactly why I do, but it's something that I feel disquiet about.

        Probably because the only way Nazi Germany could so efficiently do its evil was by using vast records, and getting people to identify their neighbors.
        Sorry for invoking Godwin's Law.

      • Can't you use something like firstname.lastname@your-google-id.gmail.com to tag your photos? If you do that, then Google will only know that the person who has the given first and last name is the one that is known by you. It doesn't correlate with another person with the same first and last name known by someone else.

        Or simply firstname.lastname@example.com could cause many false correlation when two different people have the same first and last names. This also thwarts attempts to do data mining.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by blamanj ( 253811 )

        Also, (and it seems no one has mentioned this yet), Google doesn't require you to enter an email address. If all you enter is a first name, or initials, or what ever, it takes it. The reason the email option is there is to add to your contacts.

        Also, my personal experience was that Picasa did a better job of recognizing the same person. YMMV.

      • a superb technical job has been done to get an unwanted result

        The thought comes to mind: Done by whom, and unwanted by whom? Probably not the same.

    • I agree. I tagged a number of my photos with Picasa, and I don't have emails for most of the people so I left that field blank and Google didn't care. My dad and mom are dead, so I don't think they care about directed ads or whatever the OP was worried about any way.
    • Actually it's a very poor choice of identifier for the application. You don't necessarily know the email of everyone in your pictures. You're much more likely to know their name or at least something to call them by. Even if it's "spiky hair guy".

  • Tinfoil hats (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28, 2009 @03:37AM (#27021201)

    They are trying to covertly establish a database for their next big project; Google People Search. With just a name you can find a person's address, email address, phone number and what they have searched for in the last three years.

  • So Google... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 1984 ( 56406 ) on Saturday February 28, 2009 @03:38AM (#27021203)

    What exactly did everyone think "Don't be Evil" would mean once the company went public, grew up and grew larger?

    Not that this is necessarily anything premeditated and sinister, but notice how thinking through whether something might seem weird or discomfiting isn't at the top of the list?

    • Re:So Google... (Score:4, Funny)

      by ShieldW0lf ( 601553 ) on Saturday February 28, 2009 @04:08AM (#27021319) Journal
      What exactly did everyone think "Don't be Evil" would mean once the company went public, grew up and grew larger?

      A better public relations strategy than Microsoft?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by yancey ( 136972 )

      Google itself, and other companies, may have the best of intentions and never willingly violate your privacy. At the same time, the NSA, tapped into the major Internet routers as they are already and probably with unlimited access to services like ChoicePoint, could be watching everything we do on Google, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, SMS texting, mobile location, AIM, Yahoo, QQ, and every other significant networking system, as well as banking and debit/credit transactions. The companies themselves do not ne

    • The genius behind modern democracies, such as the US, was that they were constructed with the idea that no one can be trusted with enormous power, hence checks and balances. To trust Google to not be evil is naive at best. Let's assume for a minute that the founders and current CEO are good people and will never become evil. What happens when they retire? Can we trust the people under them and trust that they can always keep an eye on them? If there can be good people in a bad organization (whistleblow

    • This is their #1 achievement in my book. Screw all the data centers, IT advancements, and what have you -- that they have been able to sell *and hold on to* the notion of "oh no, we're just your friendly neighbourhood helpers" while doing all that dubious business. Nooooo evil here, siree!

  • Facebook? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NiteRiderXP ( 750309 ) on Saturday February 28, 2009 @03:40AM (#27021207)

    Taking away the facial recognition technology, it's not that much difference than facebook. A friend takes a photo of me somewhere, sticks it on their facebook profile, labels me in the picture, and links it to my facebook profile. Then your pictures can be searched.

    Given enough labeled pictures of me, one could run it through a facial recognition system. It would have the same applications, without the initial creepy factor.

    Talking about facebook, I guess soon people will not need to label you. Facebook will label you automatically. Recognition error rates can be reduced by making sure you are in the same circle of friends.

    • Total Information Awareness (Score:5, Interesting)

      by turing_m ( 1030530 ) on Saturday February 28, 2009 @05:48AM (#27021613)

      Given enough labeled pictures of me, one could run it through a facial recognition system. It would have the same applications, without the initial creepy factor.

      It's all creepy to me. The fact is, it's pervasive and very difficult to opt out of as current social norms exist. Even if you don't have a gmail account, if you have even a small circle of friends there is a high chance of someone else having a gmail account that you have sent mail to, which puts your email in that circle of friends. If someone else in the same circle of friends has your picture and labels it, that would be enough to reliably link your email, first name, last name and face together. (Your friends would be identifiable as a cluster.)

      With the above and a sample of your writing, there is a good chance that you have a statistically improbable phrase or two (or vocabulary) that is going to identify you elsewhere on the net.

      Have enough cameras in a given country, and you can build up a database of people and locations they have been to, updating in real time. Those whose faces haven't yet been identified will relatively easily be able to be associated with the groups of people they associate with (enough times at nearby camera locations with a given person at the same time, with extra weight if those other people are there at the same times, coupled with cell phone location information), and their domicile located to within the nearest camera. In fact, just correlate the cell phone location info with the face from the camera - if they have a phone you have a match. Remember there is also the database of passports (with photos) that can be assumed scanned, and nicely labeled high-school graduation photos for all potentially subversive people coming of age. And those unidentified faces might be driving a car which will have a license plate, again, traceable to a database of names and addresses.

      At this point the number of unidentified people should be small enough so that there are only a relative handful of people who are just unidentified faces. These people will be probably be high value enough on average to make it worthwhile to find out who they are. It would be relatively inexpensive to obtain their identity - identify from the database the scheduled activities they keep, send an undercover vehicle there to stake them out at probable times, when the camera gives a positive, trail them home to an address etc. You'll get at least an alias if not a name, an address, a face, and a likely circle of friends.

      If they can recognize faces they should be able to recognize ethnicity (if you can recognize a face and an ethnicity from a photograph, so can a machine). The facial measurements and last names will form a cluster. A scan through the last names will identify the ethnicity probably within the first few entries or so.

      If I can think it, google/NSA has smarter people than me working for them and they will have done that and more.

      The only way to opt out is to live as a hermit or with similarly google avoiding hermits. Maybe not even possible. It seems harmless enough now, but the moment the rulers are actually fearful (e.g. if there was a large enough depression, people out of work started rioting in sufficient numbers or with arms), you can bet that there will be unmarked vans going around the city in the night picking up people with their "SubversiveRank (TM)" above an arbitrary threshold with a one-way ticket to either a slave labor camp or an unmarked grave.

      Who exactly does google's "Don't be Evil" motto apply to? It makes MUCH more sense if it is externally directed.

      • With the advent of automatic facial recognition technology, you need to get yourself some black bars [stupidiotic.com], and you need to wear them anytime you're out in public. Then any photos of you will come out pre-censored, no more worries about automatic facial recognition!

      • Re:Total Information Awareness (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Rob Kaper ( 5960 ) on Saturday February 28, 2009 @08:13AM (#27022025) Homepage

        It seems harmless enough now, but the moment the rulers are actually fearful (e.g. if there was a large enough depression, people out of work started rioting in sufficient numbers or with arms), you can bet that there will be unmarked vans going around the city in the night picking up people with their "SubversiveRank (TM)" above an arbitrary threshold with a one-way ticket to either a slave labor camp or an unmarked grave.

        By introducing a depression, rioting society and fearful rulers to an argument you can make almost anything look bad. Yes, under such circumstances this technology could be abused by government or other enemies.

        But people have been succesfully identified by malicious parties for ever. If you want true individual privacy we should go back to pre-Sovjet, no, pre-Nazi, no, pre-Napoleon times. And even in those times, without a surname, just one friend, co-worker, acquaintance or shop keeper would be sufficient to rat you out to the authorities.

      • It's all creepy to me. The fact is, it's pervasive and very difficult to opt out of as current social norms exist. Even if you don't have a gmail account, if you have even a small circle of friends there is a high chance of someone else having a gmail account that you have sent mail to, which puts your email in that circle of friends. If someone else in the same circle of friends has your picture and labels it, that would be enough to reliably link your email, first name, last name and face together. (Your

        • Fortunately pictures of me look like this (a bit old though), and I'm not the only one who looks that way.

          Not on Second Life, which basically caters towards furries and strange Internet sexual obsessions. But in real life... ugh. Just ugh.

      • I advise you to see certified psychiatrist, seriously. Paranoia is not a joke. This disease can and will make your life miserable.

    • Talking about facebook, I guess soon people will not need to label you. Facebook will label you automatically. Recognition error rates can be reduced by making sure you are in the same circle of friends.

      That's the problem. There's no real way for people to opt out unless they agree to sign up, and the people who do sign up are more likely to not care about it. How to make some service abide by a EULA of *non-customers* ? No way...

  • From http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2236775/researchers-hack-facial [vnunet.com]

    "VNBusinessNews - Researchers from Viet Nam have cracked facial recognition scanners on laptops to bypass security. They will be demonstrating how to hack facial recognition biometrics at the Black Hat security convention in Washington DC this week."

    From Feb 20, 2009

  • What about video facial recognition? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jtownatpunk.net ( 245670 ) on Saturday February 28, 2009 @03:58AM (#27021273)

    I want to know when I'll be able to run my porn through a facial recognition program and sort by actress. That is, uh, a friend of mine wants to know when...

  • Facial recognition + EXIF (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ArchMageZeratuL ( 1276832 ) on Saturday February 28, 2009 @04:05AM (#27021307)
    Assuming that the uploaded pictures also contain the proper EXIF data, then Google will also know exactly when was the picture taken. If you they can also figure out the location the picture was taken on (perhaps as a tagging feature connected to Google Maps?), then they'll be able to track people - where and when they were, and in whose company. They could even extend the concept to try to combine pictures of the same event from different albums into a massive "super-album" of the event, even if the owners of the photographs never found out about each other.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by clarkkent09 ( 1104833 ) *
      If you they can also figure out the location the picture was taken on (perhaps as a tagging feature connected to Google Maps?)

      Won't be necessary in many cases since EXIF specification contains gps tags and some GPS enabled phones, notably iPhone, already embed gps data in the photos. Some high end cameras do it as well, while others provide a gps add-on http://www.google.com/search?q=exif+geolocation [google.com]

    • Bah. In a hundred years, the Hive Mind will be able to recognize just about every person and location in most photographs, and probably have a good shot at sorting them chronologically. We'll be looking at tens of thousands of pictures taken by complete strangers, where we just happened to be in the camera's line of sight.

  • Did Anyone else notice that the photo in TFA is credited to Simon Garfinkel? Poor bastard.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zwicky ( 702757 )

      Simson Garfinkel. Hint: Turn your attention to the poster. You just offended a fellow Slashdotter. ;)

      • Simson Garfinkel. Hint: Turn your attention to the poster. You just offended a fellow Slashdotter. ;)

        Offending slashdotters is like depressing teenagers.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday February 28, 2009 @05:14AM (#27021513)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • These days you can't sunbathe in your backyard without appearing on Google Earth. Forget to draw a curtain and you might end up on Google StreetView. Giving you the chance to opt-out-after-the-fact is disingenuous.

    We've seen people hugging, fondling, urinating, staring and even coming out of sex shops. Google doesn't give a toss (sic) about anyone else's privacy. Privacy laws were written in a time when you could wander behind the barn if you wanted a quiet conversation. These days, we have Google peeping a

    • Think this could possibly all be put down to Google being cheap. I'm sure Google care about privacy, but they also care about profit, and dealing with the privacy issues probably costs a lot of money. Hopefully they will decide to take the issue more seriously and set a precedent so that the government doesn't have to, as privacy issues don't appear to be going away anytime soon.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      If Larry Page and Sergey Brin install webcams in every room of their house so we can see them in the nude, urinating and making love (StreetView has already caught that)

      If you don't want to be on google streetview, don't have sex in public. If you have sex in your front window, it's legal for people to stand on the sidewalk and watch you. It's not legal for them to enter your backyard to watch you, although in some jurisdictions if they don't have to defeat a fence (no matter how pathetic) they're not really trespassing until you tell them to leave.

      Don't want to be seen doing things? Don't do them in public. You also don't have a legal leg to stand on if Google comes up yo

      • Being in public is the only practical (and logistical) way to accomplish many day-to-day tasks. It is, for all intents and purposes, a requirement, not an option. This requirement, however, does not impart any kind of permission, invitation, or other level of participation in order to record or track what it is I or anyone else is doing. Even in public, people have the right to be left alone.

        • This requirement, however, does not impart any kind of permission, invitation, or other level of participation in order to record or track what it is I or anyone else is doing.

          Yes, it does. And always has.

          Cops don't need a warrant to follow you around, for example, and neither does anyone else.

          Even in public, people have the right to be left alone.

          Left alone, yes. Left unobserved, no.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by symbolic ( 11752 )

            Yes, it does. And always has.

            Cops don't need a warrant to follow you around, for example, and neither does anyone else.

            No, it hasn't. The reason it hasn't is that it has been practically and technically infeasible. However, with CCTV, data mining, other means of technical surveillance, and companies willing to sell customer information at the drop of a hat, the playing field has become far too one-sided. Without this technology, cops can't follow me around because it simply isn't practical (unless there is

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Lars T. ( 470328 )

          Even in public, people have the right to be left alone.

          Including the people you are being in front of. If you don't want them to see you doing it, don't force them.

      • > If you have sex in your front window, it's legal for people to stand on the sidewalk and watch you.

        And if they're standing there, you could see them. But if they're trying past unannounced with videocameras running, or flying overhead and enlarging aerial/satellite photos, how would you even know? We've got a skylight at the top of the stairs in our house. It lets light in, but it also means, at just the right angle some aerial Googlecam could see into our bathroom.

        Windows are on houses to let light in

        • The founding fathers never thought of this.

          I assume that at least most of the founding fathers knew what curtains are, and what they are for.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AdamHaun ( 43173 )

      We've seen people hugging, fondling, urinating, staring and even coming out of sex shops.

      How is that a problem? Everybody hugs, fondles, urinates, and stares, and more than few people have been to a sex shop. The real problem is that a lot of people don't see *enough* of that stuff to know that it doesn't mean anything.

      In many cases, the solution to the problems of honesty and transparency is more honesty and transparency.

  • What Google Wants... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) on Saturday February 28, 2009 @06:17AM (#27021683) Journal

    ... Google should get. It wants you to name all those people? That's Sergey Brin and Larry Page. All of them. Google wants email addresses? Get a gmail account, tag them all with it, spoof yourself with it, and then surf a couple dozen porn sites and post to a bunch of usenet groups. Google wants mail? Give it to them.

  • The fundamental difference (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wickerprints ( 1094741 ) on Saturday February 28, 2009 @06:36AM (#27021747)

    ...which was pointed out in the article as well as the summary, but so far has failed to gain any notice in the comments, is that one implementation is purely local to the owner's physical machine, whereas the other is hosted on a corporate server, with no provision that the data of interest is solely under the author's control.

    That's the crux of the entire matter. Talking about unique identifiers or linking to other metadata is secondary. The real issue is that anything you submit to Google, Facebook, etc. is no longer really yours. The companies who host and mine this data have a vested interest in allaying such fears. They will say and do anything to give the appearance of trustworthiness. Whether they actually follow through is simultaneously independent and irrelevant, because the fact remains: once you put data online, or have it hosted remotely, someone else has it. Data is infinitely copyable, modifiable, crackable.

    When you use a program like iPhoto to tag images you took on a camera, nobody else has access to that information, provided you don't share or publish it in some manner. The recognition technology is programmed into the application, and the application runs locally. Google's service does not. The trend toward server-side computing to be alarming. The price of convenience and robustness is security and privacy. I am becoming increasingly convinced that the former is not worth the loss of the latter.

    (I do not have the latest version of iPhoto. And I'm not an Apple apologist by any means--for instance, I despise MobileMe for the exact same reasons I find Google's practices to be problematic. We live in a time when avoiding the harvesting of personal user data by powerful, ethically questionable governments and global corporations is virtually impossible, and it is getting more difficult by the day.)

    • Re:The fundamental difference (Score:4, Insightful)

      by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Saturday February 28, 2009 @07:29AM (#27021885)

      That was my first thought, too.

      When i read "Picassa 3, now with face recognition" a while ago, I thought that this is cool.
      But when i noticed later on that its only available on googles servers, I was like "Fuck you, google".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rob Kaper ( 5960 )

      whereas the other is hosted on a corporate server, with no provision that the data of interest is solely under the author's control.

      If that's the case, don't blame Google but fix your laws on personality rights.

      Here in the Netherlands, when a company collects or processes personal information on you in the broadest sense of the word, you are at all times entitled to see the data, amend it with corrections and have it removed from their system.

      I'm almost sure that something similar exists in the US, so you could easily sue Google if you feel they violate your personality rights. I realise it's hard for John Doe to sue Megacorp these days

  • Seriously, don your tin foil hats. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by w0mprat ( 1317953 ) on Saturday February 28, 2009 @07:48AM (#27021957)
    NSA and the Department of Homeland Insecurity likely already have face recognition software trawling websites including social network websites recognizing the same people popping up in photographs all over the world. I doubt it's effective in practice, if they have this, but in theory, this would be the technique to be able to 'search' for say, a suspected terrorist, drawing down shots of faces from all over the world. Someones holiday snap of a crowd in some city. pulled down from flickr. may put a pin in the map as far as tracking a known suspect goes. Nevermind what realtime access to urban CCTV that seems to be popping up in many cities all over the world.

    ^^^You see what I did there right... I fixed it for myself, i put 'IN' in front of 'security'.

  • The government can somewhat track us, but we can track everybody in the government too.

    So what? You'll end up in a database and your name goes through 100 servers a day, but we know where politicians are on a 24/7 basis.

    This is not a book. When politicians decide (if they do that) to fsck with us we can fsck back twice as hard. "You may stop me, but you can't stop us all" stuff.

    Nothing to worry about...

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