Privacy World - The WORLD'S SHREWDEST PRIVACY NEWSLETTER
Through a Face Scanner Darkly
Anonymity forms a protective casing. When it's punctured,
on the street or at a party, the moment of recognition falls somewhere on a
spectrum of delight and horror. Soon enough, though, technology will see to it
that we can no longer expect to disappear into a landscape of passing faces.
<youtu.be/pVwBXr_nU9Q, an app built for Google Glass
<newyorker.com/reporting/2013/08/05/130805fa_fact_shteyngart?currentPage=all
by a company called FacialNetwork.com
<http://facialnetwork.com/, offers a face scanner for encounters with
strangers. You see somebody on the sidewalk and, slipping on your high-tech
spectacles, select the app. Snap a photo of a passerby, then wait a minute as
the image is sent up to the company's database and a match is hunted down. The
results load in front of your left eye, a selection of personal details that
might include someone's name, occupation, Facebook and/or Twitter profile, and,
conveniently, whether there's a corresponding entry in the national
sex-offender registry.
According to the app's creator, Kevin Alan Tussy, to
build the database, the company is "targeting those with the largest
online profiles first, like celebrities, business people, and public figures.
But we eventually plan on having everyone with a public social-media profile
included in NameTag." At the moment, the app's expanding network includes
about two million entries, and three hundred testers have already started using
it. When the app is officially released to a general audience, sometime before
the end of March, you will have to opt out of the database if you don't want to
be listed.
NameTag may appeal first to people who use dating sites:
Tussy said the company plans to partner with all of them, like Plenty of Fish,
Match.com and OkCupid. When scouting a potential mate, you can look deep into
his eyes through your Google Glass and, as is every romantic's dream, see
whether or not he's a sex offender. Tussy told the press, "It's much
easier to meet interesting new people when we can simply look at someone, see their
Facebook, review their LinkedIn page, or maybe even see their dating-site
profile. Often, we are interacting with people blindly or not interacting at
all. NameTag on Google Glass can change all that." It can, assuming that
the technology works the way it's supposed to---a tall order, especially at a
crowded party, where most people aren't found in scan-ready postures or
well-lit areas.
The more immediate concern, though, is whether the app
will be widely accessible. About a year ago, when Google made Glass and its
built-in camera available to early adopters and developers, it was apparent
that an irksome possibility presented itself:
the omniscience of cyber eyes. A few companies leapt at
the opportunity to capitalize on facial-recognition software: in addition to
Nametag, twenty-four year-old Stephen Balaban's San Francisco-based startup
Lambda Labs <lambdal.com/has an app called FaceRec in the works. Orbeus, a
computer-vision company, created a facial-recognition service, called
Rekognition <techcrunch.com/2013/06/12/visual-recognition-api-for-google-glass/,
which promises to identify faces, detect emotion, and
determine whether or not the subject is attractive. But it is all black-market
software, as far as Google is concerned. Last May, the company posted a
statement <plus.google.com/+googleglass/posts/fae5vo4zece
after hearing feedback from the first Glass-wearers:
"We've been listening closely to you, and many have expressed both
interest and concern around the possibilities of facial recognition in Glass.
As Google has said for several years, we won't add facial recognition features
to our products without having strong privacy protections in place. With that
in mind, we won't be approving any facial recognition Glassware at this
time."
The same is true today. A Google spokesperson told me
that facial-recognition software will be banned for the foreseeable future,
explaining, "It's in the very early days, and we are thinking very
carefully about how we design Glass, because new technology always raises new
issues."
Developers are holding out hope that they'll be allowed
into the app marketplace eventually---whether Apple's, Google's, or that of
some other device. At the moment, NameTag's Glass testers are using a
workaround to manually load the program. This will serve on a limited basis,
but it won't suffice for wider distribution. "Making real-time facial
recognition work on Glass hasn't been easy, but we did it," Tussy said
when NameTag was announced. "Now the question isn't if we will support
Glass; it's will Google support us?"
It's ultimately a question of taste. For years,
developers have had the ability to make illicit apps---for gambling and
pornography---that wouldn't be sold in an app store. Facial recognition isn't
criminal, but it carries one's online presence out into the physical world in a
manner that assumes a single, coherent identity. What appears is a virtual
twin, one with whom we don't wish to be seen in person. The entrepreneurs
creating this software are betting that, as we've seen before, what was once
viewed as an invasion of privacy will come to be seen as friendly and
insightful. At least for those who can afford a Google Glass.
The above article by Betsy Morais, The New Yorker.
Until our next issue stay cool and remain low profile!
Privacy World
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