7/27/2019 Spying - Facial Recognition Tech

1/2

Facial recognition tech is rocketing ahead of laws

that can control itAl Franken wants to legislate facial recognition before it gets out of hand.

"Many Americans don't realize they're already in a facial recognition database," Jennifer Lynch, a staff

attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Wednesday in a hearing on the technology.

Addressing Senator Al Franken and the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, Lynch

pointed out that there is a painful disconnect between how little personal action is required to capture a

face and how much personal information can be associated with it. All that, thanks to the Internet. As it

is, Lynch said, "Americans can't take precautions to prevent the collection of their image."

Senator Franken called the hearing out of concern for the speed at which facial recognition technology

is progressing as its use remains unregulated. Dr. Alessandro Acquisti, a professor at Carnegie Mellon

University, said facial recognition could soon become a casual pursuit as computers get smaller, more

powerful, and cloud computing costs come down. "Within a few years, real-time, automated,

mass-scale facial recognition will be technologically feasible and economically efficient," Acquisti wrote

in a statement; for companies, for friends, and for law enforcement.

Facial recognition has two characteristics that alarmed most members of the panel. First, faces (unlike

other common information gatekeepers like passwords or PIN numbers) can't be changed for

t ti S d ith i i i t ti i i d f t t th f f

by Casey Johnston - July 20 2012, 2:30am SEAST

7/27/2019 Spying - Facial Recognition Tech

2/2

company is in close communication with privacy groups like EPIC and the EFF. If Facebook makes

changes that are of concern to user privacy, it's certain to hear about them, according to Sherman.

All parties at the hearing agreed that facial recognition can be used to both benefit and take advantage

of consumers. But right now, there is little to prevent the advantage-taking. Data sharing settings put inplace by aggregation companies have lately been coercive, positioned as take-it-or-leave it scenarios

to consumers. Google, for instance, created a broad new privacy policy that gave it much more

flexibility in how it collects and uses user data, where users' only way out was deleting their accounts.

Facebook also changed its privacy policy in May, adding points like one that allows third-party apps to

keep users' information even if the app had been deleted, unless explicitly asked to delete it.

In this environment, facial recognition technology is poised at the edge of a very slippery slope. "The

risk exists that some firms may attempt to strategically use default settings, unilateral changes to

interfaces and systems, and user habituation to nudge individuals into accepting more capturing and

usage of facial datacreating a perception offait accompliwhich, in turn, will influence individuals'

expectations of privacy and anonymity," wrote Acquisti.

While the hearing was heavy with concerns, solutions or suggestions for legislating facial recognition

were not forthcoming. Should it be policed like wiretaps? Should its use be limited like medical

information? Franken asked the Federal Trade Commission's representative, Maneesha Mithal, if she

could compel the FTC to mandate that companies make facial imprint-related services an explicit opt-in

service only. All Mithal could promise was that she would take the request back to her committee for

further consideration.