On February 27, Facebook announced that its face-recognition capabilities would have new features, including the abilities to find photos you’re in but haven’t tagged, protecting you from strangers using your photos, and telling people with visual impairments what’s in your photos. Before this, Facebook claimed only the ability of face recognition to help users tag photos.
Facebook’s face recognition feature works by using algorithms that scan uploaded photos, identify faces, and compare them to faces in photos that have been previously tagged by humans. Previously, Facebook had indicated that tagging was done only by humans: “Adding tags can let people know when they’re in photos or other things you share. People you tag can receive a notification so they can see your post.”
The latest post seems to be a backdoor admission, however, that not just humans are involved in Facebook tagging. As remarked in Fast Company, “It seems the purpose of this new Facebook post isn’t so much to herald new face-recognition features, but to disclose vital information – namely, that you can opt out of face recognition.” Which means, of course, that the default setting has been that you’re automatically in face recognition mode without your knowing consent.
The need for Facebook’s public admission about its face recognition data practices is the most recent fall-out of a class action lawsuit against surreptitious collection of biometric data by Facebook and other companies. The previous day, U.S. District Judge James Donato ruled against dismissing the suit, which exposes Facebook to fines of $1000 to $5000 per user. In other words, fines that in total could amount to billions of dollars.
The lawsuit is based on a 2008 Illinois state law known as the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which Facebook argued did not apply to the company under California law. There is currently no federal legislation to protect social media users from having biometric data collected and stored without consent.
Dil Bole Oberoi
