Facebook’s and other social media are just plain dangerous. A research team has shown that Facebook has become a worldwide photo identification database. Paired with related research, there is the prospect where ugly people will be able to identify a face in a crowd and know sensitive personal information about that person. The researchers only relied on Facebook’s public profile information and off-the-shelf facial recognition software. They accessed profile information through Facebook’s search engine and matched Facebook to their pictures on anonymous Match.com accounts. Using previous research, they were successful at discovering individuals’ Social Security Numbers. From there, it is just an automated click to your Google profile, LinkedIn work history, credit report, and many other sources of private database information.
The FBI introduced nationwide facial recognition in January of 2012. The system will allow local police to identify unknown subjects in photos. Using a Next-Generation Identification system under development, law enforcement analysts will be able to upload a photo of an unknown person and get from two to 50 mug shots back. This will happen within 15 minutes so the analyst can inspect for potential matches. Large-scale searches could give many false positives.
So what might happen with your picture? The photo from your passport, a travel visa, any government ID, your driver’s license, a website, a dating site, or Facebook photos posted by you or your friends. Believe it when I say your photo is in numerous known databases and many more unknown databases.
THE FUTURE IN FACIAL RECOGNITION:
The next step is the face-scanning glasses the Brazilian police plan to wear at the 2014 World Cup. A small camera fitted to their glasses will be able to capture 400 facial images a second and send them to a central computer database storing up to 13 million faces. The system can compare biometric data at 46,000 points on a face and will immediately signal any matches to known criminals or people wanted by police.
Soon, this won’t be limited to police. Facebook has the largest collection of identified photographs in the world outside a government, and they are at work on a major photo-tagging project.
YOU MIGHT BE FALSELY TARGETED:
You could receive a letter from a state Dept. of Motor Vehicles telling you to stop driving. Your driver’s license could be revoked by an antiterrorism computerized facial recognition system that scans a database of millions of state driver’s license images. It picks you as a possible fraud because you resemble another driver. In 2012, the facial recognition system picked out more than 1,000 cases that resulted in State Police investigations. Many people so targeted are guilty of nothing more than looking like someone else.
CAN FACIAL RECOGNITION BE DEFEATED?
Face recognition works by measuring the distance from your eyes to another point on your face, such as your hairline, the bottom of your chin, your cheekbones, or the edge of your mouth. This is more difficult to achieve if you do the following: