Paper 2: Facebook Facial Recognition

Due: Friday, November 9, 2012

What exactly are the privacy issues with Facebook facial recognition? Is this another feature with serious unforeseen ("submarine") consequences to our privacy, or is that an overreaction?

Right now, Facebook claims (when they acknowledge the software at all) that it is only used to suggest tags for identifying people in photos (and Facebooks' actual use of the software for even that purpose seems irregular). For this kind of use, facial recognition is completely covered by the existing Facebook Terms of Use, in that they can gather data about you. And the actual pictures are in fact given to Facebook. You can do facial recognition yourself, by eye: if you see a picture that includes you, you can compare others in the picture with the profile pictures of your Facebook Friends and Friends of Friends.

But are there implications that go beyond that? Serious implications? How does this change the user experience within Facebook? Does it make some things quantitatively or qualitatively different? Consider Timeline, for example: in principle Timeline just makes it easier for you to organize your page. In practice, Timeline makes it much easier for people to view your past, long before you Friended them. Are you in any significant ways more "exposed" with facial recognition? Could someone use it to find out information about you that you otherwise might want to keep secret? After all, your Facebook profile picture is world-viewable already.

Are there any issues with data being used in ways that normal Facebook users would not expect?

Are there any features Facebook could limit that might preserve your privacy?

If you don't see serious questions with the feature as it is today (or even if you do), you might consider the implications of the following hypothetical Facebook feature: you upload a picture to Facebook, and they suggest who it might be. How would such a feature change your privacy? Are there some limitations or user protections Facebook should put in place? Along the same lines, you may if you wish consider the consequences if outsiders had more-or-less full access to Facebook's database and recognition algorithms. What concerns might that bring? Note the importance of the database: Chicago (and other cities) has surveillance cameras in place, but no large database linking faces to names.

If there is not an issue now, what would it take for one to emerge? Are we on some kind of slippery or not-so-slippery slope? Or is this an ineluctable and relatively straightforward consequence of our uploading pictures at all?

See Baase, 4ed, first full paragraph on p 51 and Section 2.2.4

See also http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57502284-93/why-you-should-be-worried-about-facial-recognition-technology/.



Your paper (either topic) will be graded primarily on organization (that is, how you lay out your sequence of paragraphs), focus (that is, whether you stick to the topic), and the nature and completeness of your arguments.

It is essential that all material from other sources be enclosed in quotation marks (or set off as a block quote), and preferably with a citation to the original source as well.

Expected length: 3-5 pages (800+ words)