Facial recognition is here to stay. And we should all probably accept it

"Facial recognition reveals political party in troubling new research

Researchers have created a machine learning system that they claim can determine a person’s political party, with reasonable accuracy, based only on their face...

The study, which appeared this week in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, was conducted by Stanford University’s Michal Kosinski...

The study drew criticism not so much for its methods but for the very idea that something that’s notionally non-physical could be detected this way. But Kosinski’s work, as he explained then and afterwards, was done specifically to challenge those assumptions and was as surprising and disturbing to him as it was to others..."

https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/13/f...ls-political-party-in-troubling-new-research/

 

"Here’s a Way to Learn if Facial Recognition Systems Used Your Photos

An online tool targets only a small slice of what’s out there, but may open some eyes to how widely artificial intelligence research fed on personal images...

The tool, which matches images from the Flickr online photo-sharing service, offers a window onto the vast amounts of data needed to build a wide variety of A.I technologies, from facial recognition to online “chatbots.”

Flickr images make up a significant swath of the facial recognition data sets that have been passed around the internet..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/technology/facial-recognition-photo-tool.html

Check if your Flickr photos were used to build face recognition

https://exposing.ai/

 

Greek Police to Introduce Live Facial Recognition
February 1, 2021
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/greek-police-to-introduce-live/

 

"Surveillance Nation

A BuzzFeed News investigation has found that employees at law enforcement agencies across the US ran thousands of Clearview AI facial recognition searches — often without the knowledge of the public or even their own departments...

According to reporting and data reviewed by BuzzFeed News, more than 7,000 individuals from nearly 2,000 public agencies nationwide have used Clearview AI to search through millions of Americans’ faces, looking for people, including Black Lives Matter protesters, Capitol insurrectionists, petty criminals, and their own friends and family members...

...the data indicates that Clearview has broadly distributed its facial recognition software to federal agencies and police departments nationwide, offering the app to thousands of police officers and government employees, who at times used it without training or oversight. Often, agencies that acknowledged their employees had used the software confirmed it happened without the knowledge of their superiors, let alone the public they serve..."

[Long Read]

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/clearview-ai-local-police-facial-recognition

"We've created a searchable table of 1800+ publicly funded agencies that are listed as having used the facial recognition tool Clearview AI, per data we’ve obtained. Reporting this, by contacting every agency in the chart, took 9 months. Here’s the story..."

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facial-recognition-local-police-clearview-ai-table

 

"Facial recognition should be banned, EU privacy watchdog says

Facial recognition should be banned in Europe because of its 'deep and non-democratic intrusion' into people's private lives, EU privacy watchdog the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) said on Friday.

The comments come two days after the European Commission proposed draft rules that would allow facial recognition to be used to search for missing children or criminals and in cases of terrorist attacks..."

https://www.reuters.com/technology/...eu-privacy-watchdog-says-2021-04-23/?rpc=401&

 

Banks across America test facial recognition cameras 'to spy on staff, customers'
April 24, 2021
https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/24/in_brief_ai/

 

There’s No Such Thing as Flawless Facial Recognition Technology
April 24, 2021
https://slate.com/technology/2021/0...s-response-facial-recognition-technology.html

 

"This facial recognition website can turn anyone into a cop — or a stalker PimEyes has become a hit among digital ‘creeps’ and others eager to investigate strangers. Researchers fear there’s no way to prevent it from being abused.

The facial recognition site PimEyes is one of the most capable face-searching tools on the planet. In less than a second, it can scan through more than 900 million images from across the Internet and find matches with startling accuracy. But its most distinguishing trait is who can use it: Anyone.

The search tool stands at the frontier of a new era of facial recognition surveillance: Powerfully sophisticated and available to anyone, with added abilities for those who pay. And without public oversight or government rules controlling facial recognition use, researchers expect that sites like PimEyes will multiply, capitalizing on the Internet’s vast bounty of photos and videos — and making it possible for strangers to keep tabs on people’s personal lives...

The search results don’t include exact names, but they offer a detail and precision that has left some people stunned. Pete, a 40-year-old man in Germany who asked that only his first name be used, said he ran a 17-year-old photo of himself drinking a beer on a train and was blown away when it returned a link to a recent video of him on YouTube..."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/14/pimeyes-facial-recognition-search-secrecy/

 

They do kinda include exact names. I searched a person, and about 95% of the photos were real. But about 5% were false positives (not him/her). So I decided to challenge myself and try to find the links of those false images, with a free account that is (you cannot see the full link of the image or page without a paid account). So, I found a picture from a website that has short links for pics (vq50.com), I inspected the element that says the partial link and then there's 3 dots because it's asking you to upgrade your account, and in the element there were more symbols. Normally on the UI of the site, it shows about 20-22 chars, but if you inspect it, you can see 30 chars before the 3 dots. So I looked for a site where it looked like I had almost the full link, so then I searched some images from vq50.com, and I figured out that all I'm lacking is a digit or two and .jpg at the end, and boom I got the full link. So at first I tried to use a crawler but it didn't go too well... So then I wrote a quick script to generate all possible links with the 30 chars I was given and another two digits and then .jpg at the end. Then I copied em and used Export Tabs extension to open em all at once. Then all I had to do was look through the images 1 by 1 (which is pretty fast, u can do 100 images in like a few min), until I find the image from PimEyes. Ofc, PimEyes blurs the entire image except the face, so u need to be on lookout of the face, u could miss it if it's a tougher pic. Once I found the image, all I had to do was a reverse search on yandex.com (the best reverse search engine imo) and bam, I found the website where the image is and quickly found the name of the individual. Ofc, if u make a reverse image search with the blurred image from PimEyes, u will get nothing. But if u have paid account, which is just 30 dollars monthly, u can simply view the links of where the pic came from and find it from there, skipping all that. Also, if u pay more u can block some photos from showing in the search results. What a scummy business model.

 

After EPIC-Led Coalition Letter, DC Area Facial Recognition System Will Shut Down
May 14, 2021
https://epic.org/2021/05/after-epic-led-coalition-lette.html

 

"Amazon extends moratorium on police use of facial recognition software

Amazon.com Inc told Reuters on Tuesday it is extending until further notice a moratorium that it imposed last year on police use of its facial recognition software.

The company had issued the moratorium for one year in June 2020..."

https://www.reuters.com/technology/...ial-recognition-software-2021-05-18/?rpc=401&

 

Washington DC dismantles its secretive facial recognition system
May 18, 2021
https://www.engadget.com/facial-recognition-system-washington-dc-shut-down-152933531.html

 

"Facial recog firm Clearview hit with complaints in France, Austria, Italy, Greece and the UK

Privacy groups claim images are stored 'indefinitely', even after deletion, in GDPR breach

Data rights groups have filed complaints in the UK, France, Austria, Greece and Italy against Clearview AI, claiming its scraped and searchable database of biometric profiles breaches both the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)...

The complaint also alleges that 'images and metadata collected through the scraping process are stored on Clearview’s servers... indefinitely, i.e. even after a previously collected photograph or hosting webpage has been removed or made private'..."

https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/27/clearview_europe/

 

"Canadian mounted police broke law with Clearview AI deal...

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police's (RCMP) use of the technology to conduct hundreds of searches of a database compiled illegally by a commercial company was deemed a violation of the Privacy Act, a report from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) of Canada found...

Clearview AI was found to have violated Canada's federal private sector privacy law by creating a database of over three billion images scraped from internet websites without users' consent. Clearview users, like the RCMP, could match photographs of people against photographs in the database.

'The use of FRT [facial recognition technology] by the RCMP to search through massive repositories of Canadians who are innocent of any suspicion of crime presents a serious violation of privacy,' commissioner Daniel Therrien said. 'A government institution cannot collect personal information from a third party agent if that third party agent collected the information unlawfully'..."

https://www.itpro.co.uk/technology/...an-mounted-police-broke-law-with-clearview-ai

 

UK’s ICO warns over ‘big data’ surveillance threat of live facial recognition in public
June 18, 2021
https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/18/u...-threat-of-live-facial-recognition-in-public/

ICO: Blog: Information Commissioner’s Opinion addresses privacy concerns on the use of live facial recognition technology in public places

Information Commissioner’s Opinion : The use of live facial recognition technology in public places
(PDF): https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/2619985/ico-opinion-the-use-of-lfr-in-public-places-20210618.pdf

 

EU privacy watchdogs call for ban on facial recognition in public spaces
June 21, 2021
https://www.reuters.com/technology/...-facial-recognition-public-spaces-2021-06-21/

 

Researchers from Adversa devised an attack technique, dubbed Adversarial Octopus, against Facial Recognition systems
June 22, 2021
https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/119248/hacking/adversarial-octopus-facial-recognition.html

 

Facial recognition tech for bears aims to keep humans safe
June 27, 2021
https://www.digitaltrends.com/news/facial-recognition-tech-for-bears-aims-to-keep-humans-safe/

 

Maine bans facial recognition technology from schools and most police work
The state has also introduced a variety of accountability measures.
June 30, 2021
https://www.engadget.com/maine-facial-recognition-law-191252742.html

 

US watchdog urges federal law enforcement to better track facial recognition amid accuracy concerns
June 29, 2021
https://www.cyberscoop.com/gao-federal-facial-recognition-protests/

 

they exploited covid to track ppl down, special app issued by the gov and mandatory, supposedly to protect the citizen, especially when he is on vacation or travelling, they don't need facial recognition, its just one form of tracking, this is controversial topic which has its benefits and cons. By definition most govs will want to know everything about you, with no room to privacy at any moment, drones will be able to see everything too, every city have drones now. Sometimes this is good though as it might decrease crime and facilitate intervention, but at what cost.

 

Man Wrongfully Arrested By Facial Recognition Tells Congress His Story
Robert Williams was arrested last year in Detroit after a facial recognition system misidentified him as a suspect.
July 13, 2021
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgx...y-facial-recognition-tells-congress-his-story

 

Backlash to retail use of facial recognition grows after Michigan teen unfairly kicked out of skating rink
July 15, 2021
https://www.zdnet.com/article/backl...kicked-out-of-skating-rink-after-false-match/