Here s a way to learn if facial recognition systems used your photos
5 Feb, 2021 05:00 AM
7 minutes to read
A mosaic of about 50,000 images from the MegaFace dataset, which includes over 3.5 million. Photo / Adam Harvey via The New York Times
A mosaic of about 50,000 images from the MegaFace dataset, which includes over 3.5 million. Photo / Adam Harvey via The New York Times
New York Times
By: Cade Metz and Kashmir Hill
An online tool targets only a small slice of what s out there, but may open some eyes to how widely artificial intelligence research fed on personal images. When tech companies created the facial recognition systems
Online tool identifies whether personal photos have been compromised
and last updated 2021-02-05 15:43:50-05
CHICAGO â Many of us may be familiar with the auto-tag feature on Facebook. You post a photo and the platform can identify whoâs in the picture, using facial recognition.
But privacy experts say millions of images collected online by photo sharing apps are fueling artificially intelligent surveillance.
The day after the siege on Capitol Hill, facial recognition use spiked. Reportedly, the FBI and local law enforcement used the technology to identify rioters.
âThis is a technology that enhances the abilities of police officers to the degree of almost superheroes,â said Liz OâSullivan, the director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a New York based civil rights and privacy group.
Sherry Turkle, founder of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. Photo: Boston Globe/Getty Images
In the fall of 1976, Sherry Turkle was recruited to the faculty of MIT to join what would soon become the program on Science, Technology, and Society â one of the nationâs first. After having written a book on French psychoanalysis â a âsociology of the sciences of the mind,â as she describes it â Turkle was fascinated with the cultural forces that shift our thought.
So when she encountered computers for the first time, she had one pressing question on her mind: How would these new machines change us?
More than 70 advocacy organizations have sent a letter to Congress and the Biden administration warning against making changes to Section 230, the law that gives tech platforms immunity for the content users post on their sites.
Organizations such as Fight for the Future, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, and Data for Black Lives are typically critical of laws that indemnify Big Tech companies, but in this case, the civil rights advocates and tech firms are aligned: Nobody wants Twitter or Facebook to be legally obligated to police more kinds of speech.
“We concur that Congress should act to address the harms of Big Tech through meaningful legislative action on data privacy, civil rights and others fronts, and enforcement of existing antitrust laws,” the letter says. “But uncareful efforts to poke holes in Section 230 could result in the exact opposite outcome.”
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