analysisGoogle’s foray into face recognition raises privacy concerns

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Eric Schmidt and I have at least one thing in common: we both find facial recognition software creepy.

In an onstage interview at this year’s D9 conference , the executive chairman of Google said, “I’m very concerned personally about the union of mobile tracking and face recognition.”

He went on to explain that Google had actually developed facial-recognition software as part of its Google Goggles product but withheld the technology because of privacy concerns.

Imagine being able to identify a stranger simply by photographing them with your smartphone: up would pop their name, age, social networking profile. From a technical perspective, with modern face-recognition algorithms and a large enough database of faces, it’s entirely possible. It’s also creepy.

That’s something Schmidt and I agree on. So, then, given Schmidt’s stance, I was somewhat surprised to learn that Google recently acquired PittPatt, a software company that specializes in — you guessed it — facial recognition software.

PittPatt’s software, spun off from research done at Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon University, is part of the growing computer-vision industry. According to the company, the software can “search images for faces, determine if faces are the same person, track faces in video sequences and pinpoint constituent landmarks in faces.”

The software does both facial detection (simply identifying the presence of faces) and facial recognition (identifying individuals based on pattern matching). The latter is what has privacy advocates most worried.

So, what will Google do with PittPatt’s software? In short: we don’t know, yet.

Could be used in image search, YouTube, Google+

A spokesperson told me the company has “nothing to announce at this time.” But it’s not hard to imagine some likely applications.

For example, Google has a photo-management program called Picasa, which already uses facial recognition software to help organize images by person.

It’s also not difficult to imagine facial-recognition software being rolled into a service like Google image search or YouTube. But it’s also possible — and this, for me, is where things begin to cross the line into the realm of the creepy — that PittPatt’s technology could be folded into Google+, the recently launched social network.

Google+ already has photo sharing and photo tagging functions that are very similar to ones used by the rival social networking site Facebook. If Google does add facial recognition to its photo-sharing functions, it certainly won’t be the first site to do so.

Late last year, Facebook did exactly that and got itself into hot water with a feature called Tag Suggestions. It used facial recognition to automatically identify people in Facebook photos in order to make tagging them easier. The feature isn’t currently available in Canada, but in parts of the world where it is available, it’s been quite controversial.

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has said he has privacy concerns about the use of facial-recognition software but recently purchased PittPatt, a company specializing in just such software. So far, Google has not yet said how it will use the software. Philippe Wojazer

Critics take issue with the fact that facial recognition is enabled by default, that the feature is opt-out (rather than opt-in) and that the settings are confusing. This past June, in the EU (which has strong data-protection laws), the Tag Suggestions feature was probed by regulators. If Google does incorporate facial recognition technology into its own social network, it would be wise to pay especially close attention to the Facebook example.

“We’ve said that we won’t add face recognition to our apps or product features unless we have strong privacy protections in place, and that’s still the case,” a Google spokesperson said.

I have to wonder, though, might Google consider its much-touted “Circles” feature, which allows Google+ users to organize people into separate groups, as having “strong privacy protections”?

Are the granular sharing options built into Google+ enough to make web-scale facial recognition software any less intrusive? It’s hard to tell.

For me, the key will be transparency. As creepy as I find facial recognition, I completely understand that others really like it. I understand that it can have practical (even fun) uses. And I have no problem with large companies automatically scanning photos and videos for faces — as long as users are aware that it’s happening and have the opportunity to make informed choices.

I’ll take the creepy face recognition I know over the creepy face recognition I don’t any day.

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Facebook blocks access to its hidden, unreleased iPad application

By Sam Oliver

Published: 01:05 PM EST

While a simple hack temporarily allowed users to preview what is expected to be Facebook’s official iPad application, the social networking site has since blocked users from logging in with the unreleased software.

Users who implement the modification are still able to launch the iPad-friendly version of the Facebook iOS application, but according to TechCrunch, “newcomers are being turned away at the login screen.”

“Oddly it seems that those who managed to sneak into the party before Facebook started closing the gates are still on the list… to some extent,” the report said.

Since the Facebook-for-iPad tweak gained considerable attention, the social networking site has apparently blocked new users, and made it so certain features do not work for those who have already implemented the hack. For example, notifications are said to be acting strangely or not functioning at all.

Earlier this week, it was discovered that a native version of the Facebook application was hidden in the latest update to the iPhone application available on the App Store. By making slight modifications, users were able to unlock the concealed software that was mostly written in HTML 5.

The secret Facebook iPad application features a left-side menu system for navigating the site. It also has iPad-specific user interface elements, like overlay menus to write a post on the site.

Flipping the iPad horizontally also makes a user’s list of online friends appear for chat. Users could also share photos with the native application.

The secret software was discovered in version 3.4.4 of the Facebook for iPhone application released this week. The latest update was characterized in the App Store as including a handful of bug fixes, but made no mention of the iPad. In fact, Facebook has never publicly made mention of a forthcoming native iPad application.

But in June, The New York Times reported that the site was set to launch official software on the iPad App Store in “coming weeks.” The software was said to feature a “slick design” tailored for the multi-touch interface of the iPad, including overhauled Facebook Chat and Groups features, and also allowing the ability to shoot and upload photos and videos.

Earlier this month, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg promised his company plans to launch a number of products in the coming weeks and months. He referred to the period as Facebook’s “launching season” of 2011, a season that kicked off with the announcement of a new partnership with Skype for video calling.

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