Facial recognition and privacy protections

[danguyf]

"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."
-- from ProjectGlass on Google+

I'm not sure that I see people being able to identify you as rising to the level of privacy-invasion.

I think that facial recognition would be very useful for people with face-blindness, as well as people (like me) who are always forgetting the names of those they meet casually.

That said, I can't think of a compelling use-case for allowing people to identify anyone and everyone. I would support limiting facial recognition to:
(A) those one has met and added personally,
(B) social network "friends", and
(C) public figures.

For (C), it would be easy for Google to provide optional downloads of facial-metrics; one for politicians, one for celebs, etc. For (B), there could be an app that scans the profile pics of your "friends" on Google+, FB, what have you. And for (A), I foresee a Glassware app that allows you to record an image and short audio clip whenever someone introduces himself/herself so that you can (1) have it replayed whenever you see that person again and/or (2) go back after the fact and tag that person with their name -- starting with the app's best text-to-speech guess/transcription -- and generate a facial-metric from the image so that the name will pop up as text whenever you see that person again.

(Going further, I can foresee people generating their own facial-metrics with attached metadata like a .vcard, and exchanging them via QR code on their business cards.)

I wonder if this limitation would assuage Google's privacy concerns?

 

[pornoqueen]

Hello,

the suggestions you made are highly interesting! Imagining I am to wear a Glass within the next few years, an app which does exactly what you described would be a great addition to the features of G.G.

 

[e1227435]

If this project meets success, it would change drastically the idea of the private zone of the people. When a person goes outside, it's normal to think that he's not "online" and that his personal information is protected by the fact, that he cannot be recognised on the street by people, who don't know him. This is about to change, because all of the options, which would be provided by the glass:
"The experience of being a citizen, in public, is about to change" /Mark Hurst/
I totally agree with this statement, because the glass contains a processor, which means it's a computer as well, and we all know about the possibilities of the computers. When a lot of our information is on the internet, it's possible, that this information could be used outside the net, which is related mostly to the face recognition features. Altough the privacy policy wants from the users to be correct using the glasses and not harm the others privacy rights, the google glass, as I said, is a computer so if a face is recognised, the owner could do with this information whatever he likes. This includes searching for information on the net and even changing it.
The other big problem is the feature for taking photos. Altough there would be a protection and a sign, that the glasses are recording video/ taking a picture, that could be easily hidden/hacked, as I said this is a computer. A owner of the glasses would have the possibility not only to get information on the internet for people, but to record and share a new one, which attack the people's privacy rights.
And to show the possible outlook of the society, I will post another quote:
"Our society will be surveillant society; it's up to us to make that a virtue, and not just another fear" /Devin Coldewey/
The problem, which I did not mention, was the problem, that google and respectively another companies would have the possibility to get additional information about us, to track our location, record our conversations etc.

So we should defenately think about the possible privacy problems, which google glass could cause!
#gsi

 

[FinancialWar]

wear a mask on street then.

You don't have the right to privacy when you go out in the public.

 

[Unhived__Mind]

Honestly google glass is about as stupid an idea as it gets...there gimicky..clumsy...rude...stupid looking....the list just goes on..and anyone who wears these will be made fun of for talking to themselves. ...that being said im sure ill pony for a pair and secretly hate myself.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app

 

[danguyf]

This is just the testbed for putting the same sort of tech in contact lenses.

 

[FinancialWar]

Honestly google glass is about as stupid an idea as it gets...there gimicky..clumsy...rude...stupid looking....the list just goes on..and anyone who wears these will be made fun of for talking to themselves. ...that being said im sure ill pony for a pair and secretly hate myself.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app

hey look, another neo-Luddite who's going to fail in life.

 

[projeto56]

Honestly google glass is about as stupid an idea as it gets...there gimicky..clumsy...rude...stupid looking....the list just goes on..and anyone who wears these will be made fun of for talking to themselves. ...that being said im sure ill pony for a pair and secretly hate myself.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app

Same was said when the cellphone was created.

We'll talk again in 5 years

 

[b3bluesman]

You know this only means that the law enforcement agencies and feds are going to be outfitted with this thing first with unofficial cracked facial recognition software thus resulting in more tyrannical living conditions. Just recently Texas Instruments developed a chip that operates in the terahert frequency range that supposedly will give people the ability to see through walls.

 

[danguyf]

To reiterate, I support the idea of banning a Glass app capable of identifying anyone and everyone on the street via facial recognition. That is, I think, an invasion of privacy. (Though I understand the counter-argument that there is no expectation of privacy while in public, and I think that a case can be made, but I think that it's sensible of Google to ban such things for now until people are more used to it.)

I see no reason why Google should ban all facial recognition, though. I should be able to take a facial recognition snapshot (henceforth "FRS") of my friends and tag them with their names and other metadata. I should be able to consent to giving my FRS to business associates, whether by orally agreeing and then standing still while their Glass scans my face or by providing a URL via QR or bluetooth that enables their Glass to download my FRS.

Going forward, I would like to have my FRS attached to my social networking account and be able to control who can see it. Maybe I want just one circle to have access. Maybe I want all of my circles to have access. Or maybe I want all of my circles plus one or more degree of separation. (Personally, I think that it would be useful to go out one degree of separation, so that friends of friends could "recognize" me in public.) Those who felt they had nothing to fear could crank it all the way up to 6 degrees of separation, effectively making them recognizable by the world at large.

It could be the enabler of Cory Doctrow's whuffie-based economy.