Friday, September 30, 2011

Cloud powered facial recognition is terrifying

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/cloud-powered-facial-recognition-is-terrifying/245867/

New facial recognition software co-developed by Carnegie Mellon and Google is able to match your photo to your entire online presence in just minutes. The technology sources your information from the wealth of information that people have made available on various social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and also other web sources such as university and professional/company pages.
Interestingly, the implications of the software go beyond matching a face to personal data. Scientist were able to show that machine intelligence could be applied to the personal data to make predictions and inferences about the individuals. An example was presented where the facial recognition software was combined with another piece of software which predicted Social Security Numbers based on personal data such as age, geographic location, etc. By combining the two applications together researchers were able to determine an individuals social security number starting from a simple, anonymous photo.

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