| Facial recognition technology ‘poses threat to privacy’ |
WASHINGTON A US Senate hearing late on Wednesday highlighted concern over the growing use of facial recognition technologies, both for law enforcement use and in big social networks such as Facebook.
Senator Al Franken, who chaired the judiciary subcommittee hearing, said the expansion of such biometric technologies poses concern over privacy and civil liberties.
Franken said that in law enforcement, the use of facial recognition “will catch criminals,” but “could come at a high cost to our civil liberties” if police use the systems to target “innocent civilians” or political rallies.
He also expressed concern that facial recognition used by Facebook to “tag” or identify members could be abused by divulging information that its members do not want made public.
Representatives of the FBI and Facebook testified about their safeguards, and civil liberties advocates and others offered views on the new technology.
Franken said facial recognition “exists right here today” and that “our federal privacy laws are unprepared to deal with this technology.”
“Law enforcement doesn’t need a warrant to use this technology,” Franken added.
On the commercial side, he said, “if a store wants to take a picture and generate a ‘faceprint,’ they can do it, and they might even be able to sell it to third parties.”
Jerome Pender, an FBI deputy assistant director, said the federal law enforcement agency has a database of 12.8 million photos and plans to expand a pilot project to nationwide use by 2014.
Separately, Brian Zylstra, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office, said Washington will become the first US state to allow eligible residents to register to vote through Facebook, in an initiative due to launch this month.
Online voter registration has existed in Washington since 2008, but the latest effort to increase voter participation is designed for users who already have a Facebook account.
Through a software application interface jointly developed by Facebook and Microsoft Corp. at no cost to the state, users wishing to register online to vote will be able to do so on the official Facebook page of the secretary of state.
To complete the registration process, an applicant must provide a name and birth date, which Facebook already collects from its users’ profiles, and a state identification number or driver’s licence number, said Shane Hamlin, the state’s co-director of elections.
But Hamlin said the additional data is not shared with the social media network, which says it has more than 900 million users worldwide.
Agencies
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