News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Facebook is terrifying by jdhzzz on Saturday February 04, 2017 @02:43PM (#13568635)
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.
Re:Facebook is terrifying by libraryatnight on Saturday February 04, 2017 @03:20PM (#13568813)
"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.
Re:Facebook is terrifying by pmoriarty on Saturday February 04, 2017 @03:38PM (#13568905)
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.

Re:Facebook is terrifying by jdormit on Saturday February 04, 2017 @04:05PM (#13569059)
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.
Re:Facebook is terrifying by pmoriarty on Saturday February 04, 2017 @04:23PM (#13569146)
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.

Re:Facebook is terrifying by jdormit on Saturday February 04, 2017 @05:12PM (#13569410)
> 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.

Re:Facebook is terrifying by mamon on Saturday February 04, 2017 @06:27PM (#13569728)
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.