SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook on Friday
confronted a new obstacle over what to do with one of its most vital assets —
pictures.
The company promised European regulators that it would forgo
using facial recognition software and delete the data used to identify Facebook
users by their pictures.
The decision could have wide repercussions on how facial
recognition technology — a particularly sensitive technological advance — is
used globally as surveillance cameras are increasingly installed in public
spaces.
“This is a big deal,” said Chris Hoofnagle, a law professor
at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in online privacy.
“The development of these tools in the private sector
directly affects civil liberties,” he explained. “The ultimate application is
going to be — can we apply these patterns in video surveillance to
automatically identify people for security purposes and maybe for marketing
purposes as well?”
The agreement comes as Facebook is under pressure from Wall
Street to profit from its vast trove of data, including
pictures, and also from regulators worldwide over the use of personal
information.
The decision in Europe applies to the “tag suggestion,” a
Facebook feature that deploys a sophisticated facial recognition tool to
automatically match pictures with names. When a Facebook user uploads a photo
of friends, the “tag suggestion” feature can automatically pull up the names of
the individuals in the image.
The facial recognition software was developed by an Israeli
company, Face.com, which Facebook acquired for an
undisclosed price in June.
The company quietly and temporarily pulled the plug on “tag
suggestion” for all Facebook users several months ago. The company said on
Friday it was to “make improvements to the tool’s efficiency” and did not say
how soon it would be restored. However, the company promised European
regulators on Friday that it would reinstate the feature on the Continent only
after getting their approval.
Facebook declined to say under what circumstances the “tag
suggestions” would be back online in the United States or elsewhere.
Facebook’s promise to the European regulators is part of an
investigation into whether the company’s data collection practices comply with
European privacy rules. It was made with regulators in Ireland, where the
company has its European headquarters.
“We will continue to work together to ensure we remain
compliant with European data protection law,” Facebook said in a statement.
Europe is an important market for the company, as it
struggles to prove its worth on Wall Street. About one in four Facebook users
logs in from Europe. According to the company’s earnings figures, Europe
accounts for just under a third of its advertising revenue.
Pictures have always been vital to Facebook. Pictures are
what drew users to Facebook in its earliest days, and pictures are what
continue to keep people coming back. Facebook users upload 300 million images a
day. The company’s acquisition of Instagram, the photo-sharing site, eliminated
its biggest rival in this area.
Photo tagging is important for Facebook in the sense that it
allows the social network to better analyze with whom its users interact in the
real world.
In addition to scrutiny from European regulators, Facebook
has also come under fire from consumer protection groups and lawmakers in the
United States over its use of facial recognition technology. At a hearing on
Capitol Hill last July, Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, described Facebook as the “world’s
largest privately held database of face prints — without the explicit consent
of its users.”
On Friday, Mr. Franken said in an e-mail statement that he
hoped Facebook would offer a way for American users to opt in to its
photographic database.
“I believe that we have a fundamental right to privacy, and
that means people should have the ability to choose whether or not they’ll be
enrolled in a commercial facial recognition database,” he said. “I encourage
Facebook to provide the same privacy protections to its American users as it
does its foreign ones.”
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group
in Washington, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over
Facebook’s use of automatic tagging. The complaint is pending. The commission
has a consent order with Facebook that subjects the company to audits over its
privacy policies for the next 20 years.
Personal data is Facebook’s crown jewel, but how to use it
artfully and profitably is arguably its biggest challenge. Facebook has
access to a tremendous amount of information about its one billion users,
including the photos they upload every day. Marketers have pushed for greater
access to that data, so as to tailor the right message to the right customer.
Consumers and lawmakers have resisted, to different degrees in different
countries around the world.
“They are pushing the edges of what privacy rules may allow,
just as an aggressive driver might with parking rules,” said Brian Wieser, an
analyst with the Pivotal Research Group, a research firm in New York. “You
don’t know you’ve broken a law until someone says you’ve broken a law.”
Several independent application developers are experimenting
with how to use facial recognition technology in the real world, and have
sought to use pictures on Facebook to build products of their own.
For example, one company in Atlanta is developing an
application to allow Facebook users to be identified by cameras installed in
stores and restaurants. The company, Redpepper, said in a blog post that users
would have to authorize the application to pull their most recent tagged
photographs. The company said its “custom-developed cameras then simply use
this existing data to identify you in the real world,” including by offering
special discounts and deals.
By SOMINI SENGUPTA and KEVIN J. O’BRIEN
Source:NYTimes
No comments:
Post a Comment