The odds are you are not just a face in the crowd any longer. Even if your picture isn’t plastered all over social networking and photo-sharing sites, facial recognition technology in public places is making it harder if not impossible to remain anonymous. Lesley Stahl reports on the new ways this technology is being used that even has one of its inventors calling it too intrusive. Her 60 Minutes report will be broadcast Sunday, May 19 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Read more on 60 Minutes. The segment features research and a demonstration by Alessandro Acquisti. I’m really delighted to see this as I think this segment may really help to inform the public and members of Congress. I look forward to watching the show.
Thanks to Joe Cadillic for the link.
(Video) A Face in the crowd: Say goodbye to anonymity
60 Minutes: Even if your picture isn’t on the Internet, computerized facial recognition makes it virtually impossible to keep your “faceprint” private.
Over the last 10 years, the ability of computers to identify faces has gotten 100 times better, a million times faster, and exponentially cheaper.
Yet facial recognition technology is still a work in progress. While investigators in the Boston marathon bombing had multiple images of both suspects, the technology did not come up with a match. They were not identified by their faces, but by their fingerprints! Authorities won’t say what went wrong. One possibility is that government data banks – through which the photos would’ve been searched – are not big enough.
As we discovered, the FBI is working on expanding its database. Businesses are tapping facial recognition to sell us stuff and computer scientists are upgrading the technology.
Watch the video: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50147158n