Who Owns Your Face?

Food for thought... Do you own your face? For years even the giant tech firms privacy advocates battle steered clear of crossing the line of developing an app that can be used to instantly identify and profile any person, anywhere just by taking a photo. Google admitted they could do this nearly a decade ago but choose not to for fear the technology would likely be used in criminal and unethical ways.

Unfortunately a startup called Clearview AI has crossed the privacy line after stealing over 3 billion images of people’s faces by scraping social media, education, government, news and employer sites. They assembled the world’s largest facial image database and combined it with personal data available from data brokers to build an AI powered app with the goal of being able to instantly identify and profile anyone, anywhere…

While this tech will help police, it will also help police states and politicians keep dissidents in check. Don’t care because you're a hang ‘em high kind of guy? Are you still going to be OK when a serial rapist or serial killer snaps an image of your daughter or wife and instantly knows her address, contact information, where she works or goes to school, and what she drives? Plus even more?

What if you’re at a political event, a hotel, church, the mall, a bar, gun range or any other place. Do you want someone that doesn’t agree with your life choices to be able to instantly identify you and have your contact, personal, financial and profile information? Besides privacy loss and harassment, blackmail and identity theft are real concerns.


What about foreign governments? Do we want a foreign government or gang to be able to harass or threaten us while we’re traveling?

Senior citizens are already being taken advantage of at an alarming rate. Do we really want criminals to be able to snap a photo of your granny and target her for a con? 



My goal as a privacy advocate isn’t to suggest we all stop using social media. It’s to help shed light on the real issue and risks that arise when data is stored and complied from multiple sources to build a profile or book of life. It’s dangerous to our liberty. The issue has been hidden and blurred behind the curtain of technology. We can stop the long term storage of data and those that aggregate data with regulation. Thoughts?

Blue Moon

You cant put it back in the bottle. Instant Checkmate on steroids.

Just think you post a pic here and anyone here within a couple of clicks can find out everything about you...........EVERYTHING.


Wear some google glasses and you will know everybody pretty soon.

and this is how they are starting to persecute the Christians also

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15507/christians-persecution-global-catastrophe

school systems and media; orange man bad, china good, I like turtles.

All you have to do is look to china to see where this is going. Hint: they have suicide nets around their buildings. Prison planet.

Yeah, the interest in our wives is creeping me out.

To mix metaphors - this ship has sailed and the horse is already out of the barn. The sheer volume of people with images on the Net is pretty high - and once there, there forever. Not much can be done about it at this point other than to regulate acceptable usage.

This issue isn’t about the horse being out of the barn or the cat being out of the bag, it’s about wicked cat herders illegally rounding up all the cats and training them to kill your dog, rape your loved ones, take away your guns, and any other freedom you care about. Best to just say no to wicked cat herders…

This entire issue arose because Clearview AI, the wicked cat herder, aggregated stolen data that none of us agreed to give them and trained it to do wicked things. To your point about regulation, LinkedIn went so far as to sue Clearview AI over the issue of the stolen facial images but they unfortunately lost the case because we don’t have proper regulations in place to deal with our new digital society. I’m not a big government guy but in this regard we need regulation to protect our freedom.

We should be able to go to church and fellowship with our friends on social media without having all of our data stored forever. Many of the privacy issues are mitigated if we can limit data storage and even more importantly, limit or stop data aggregation through regulation.

My primary concern is with data aggregation. It's the engine cobbled together for digital marketing that is now being used by political opponents to attack our freedoms. We can stop data aggregation through regulation and it will not break the internet. In fact, it will go a long way towards fixing it...

One of the more powerful and perhaps lesser known apps that you will find on the web is the reverse image search offered by Google. After uploading a photo or image, you can use it to identify websites where the image can be found.

Just be careful when using it. I uploaded a photo of myself and all I got back were several related links to senior citizens and a lot of photos of old men the Google search engine called "similar".

For those of us that create original, copyrighted content it's a great tool. It allows content creators or services that represent our images to monitor digital useage. When big companies illegally use images they often end up paying for use rights. On the other hand when the same technology is used to combine your personal image along with every keystroke you've ever made since you started using Windows 10 or set up your Facebook account, the results are usually very concerning.

No windows 10 or facebooger here. My image isn't out there. except from being in public in stores I'm sure.............even then not a one without sunglasses on.

NOTE:

I pulled some of the comments from here as they were getting personal; ya'll try and play nice please.

Thanks

Vernon

Looking back, the seed for me becoming a privacy advocate was planted when one of the first tech startups I was with in the late 90’s was required by our government to provide a backdoor so they could monitor calls and data on our network devices. In my youth I was pretty surprised but rationalized the demand because I assumed our government had our best interests at heart and besides, I was more focused on our rising stock price.

The seed took root a year later during an important business trip to China. Besides an advanced missile launch control system, our little startup had one of the first fiber optic systems that converged voice, video, and data. China was very interested in the technology so the State Department made arrangements for me to meet with one of the most powerful leaders in China.

The night before our meeting I was unexpectedly jolted from a sound sleep when my Nokia GSM mobile phone rang in the middle of the night. My sweet little toddler back in Texas had stumbled and bumped her head. The injury required a couple of stitches and her mom wanted me to comfort our baby girl with a prayer.

I didn’t discuss the call with anyone but a few hours later when I was introduced to one of China most powerful leaders, the very first thing he said to me was how he so hoped all was well with my young child. He wished her good health and a speedy recovery. I had been briefed by State before my first trip to China that everything I said or did in China would be monitored but it was still way beyond creepy to experience it first hand. It was all I could do to genuinely thank him for his kind concern but even with my best poker face I’m sure he noticed my skin crawling…

The good news is they bought and deployed our system. When it comes to privacy and China, Huaiwa didn’t invent the backdoor…

Blue Moon

Face? lol

Better question is who owns you? It's not who you think..

very true!!!

All the data is for the "smart" cities the plan to move us into.