All your face are belong to us

Introducing Face Recognition For More Features

on my facebook page today:

 Hi
we’re always working to make Facebook better, so we're adding more ways to use face recognition besides just suggesting tags. 

For example, face recognition technology can do things like: 
 • Find photos you're in but haven't been tagged 
• Help protect you from strangers using your photo 
• Tell people with visual impairments who's in your photo or video You control face recognition. 
This setting is on, but you can turn it off any time, which applies to features we may add later. -The Facebook Team

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it's not just facebook:

here is how it is being used in 7-11s in Thailand. (FTimes)

The ubiquitous retailer, whose Thai stores are operated by a unit of the Bangkok-based conglomerate Charoen Pokphand (CP), is to work with Remark Holdings, a Nasdaq-listed AI company with operations in China and the US. Remark will deploy its KanKan technology, which uses gesture recognition to collect and analyse data points on traffic in stores, staff activities, how long customers linger at specific shelves and even their emotions as they pass through stores.

this article is about China's use of face recognition. (venture beat).

As China’s Lunar New Year approaches, citizens and tourists will spot the country’s police force with facial recognition glasses. These glasses will help officials use real-time ID verification to fight crimes during the celebrations around this year’s event. But interestingly, such facial recognition technologies are not new to the people of China. In the past, the country has relied heavily on cardless identification. The “Smile to Pay” feature, launched by Alibaba’s Ant Financial affiliate, lets users take a grinning selfie to authenticate a digital payment. Facial recognition in China also allows students to enter university halls, travelers to board planes, and employees to enter office premises with ease and no ID cards. In 2015, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security announced it was looking to implement an “omnipresent, completely connected, always on and fully controllable” network using facial recognition systems and CCTV hardware.

Survival Times has six ways to fool face recognition.



and facial recognition is not just for people: They now can ID cows.

Students at MIT are busy trying to fool it too.



 so what could go wrong?

UK Guardian reports.

everyone has the information:  the FBI, for example.

but then you read this:

He mentioned FindFace, for example, the Russian company that made an app that could . The app was supposed to be for finding friends, but members of the online messaging board Dvach started using it to and spam their families with the news of their discovery.

the idea is being sold under the guise of "convenience", and of course, as a way to fight fraud and catch criminals.

Ah, but what happens when people with the wrong ideas are declared to be criminals?

And Technology Review notes the technology is getting so sophisticated that it could pick up clues if you are gay, your IQ, your political leanings, or if you have criminal tendencies.

what could go wrong?

what about those of us who just don't want people snooping into our lives? (uh, remember that nasty 4th Amendment that limits the government from snooping in on you?).

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

the problem is, of course, you signed up and gave Facebook, Twitter, your IPhone etc. all that nice information voluntarily, and they are not the government.

But how many folks realize that they sell this information to a lot of people, and that the gov't snoops in and finds out what you say anyway.

I don't have an IPhone (but my stepson and his wife do, as does my granddaughter). Not because of privacy issued, but because the print is too small to read, and my house has lousy cellphone reception thanks to the house being basalt and surrounded by concrete walls.

IF they want to call me, they call the cook or the gardener, both of whom have ordinary cellphones.

As for Facebook: I avoid posting my photo there, but probably they have me on someone else's post. Sigh. 

And if the gov't wants me, no problem: I'm on the Philippine gov't data base for my visa (and they do use facial recognition software at the airport)...

as for the US, I am already on the US gov't data base because I worked for the Feds (IHS).

Heck, my OPM personnel file was one of several million hacked by China a couple years ago, so China probably knows me too.