Facebook approached
how important it considers facial-recognition technology with the recent
acquisition of Face.com, An Israeli firm specializing in software that powered
Facebook's own tagging suggestions.
The privacy
implications -- and the legal limitations -- surrounding facial recognition
technology remain murky. Franken suggested that Congress should consider
legislation that could clarify the appropriate uses of software like that
behind Facebook's tag suggestions, both for commercial purposes and in the
hands of law enforcement authorities.
Existing laws which
are to be almost totally unprepared to
deal with facial recognition technology, as Franken said.
Representatives
of the FBI and Federal Trade Commission were on hand at Wednesday's hearing to
offer their perspective on facial-recognition applications. The FBI is
developing what it calls a next-generation identification program, which will
allow authorized law enforcement agencies to query a massive database of
criminal photos. The program, currently in a pilot phase with about 12.8
million photos in the database, is on track to be fully operational by the
summer of 2014.
Franken expressed
concerns that the technology could pave the way for law-enforcement officials
to expand surveillance programs, capturing images of protesters or participants
at a political rally, for instance. But Jerome Pender, deputy assistant
director of the Information Services Branch at the FBI's Criminal Justice
Information Services Division, promised lawmakers that the database would only
draw on mug shots and not collect images from social-networking sites or other
non-criminal repositories.
The FTC has also
been evaluating facial-recognition applications in its ongoing review of the
privacy practices of companies in the digital age, said Maneesha Mithal, associate director at the commission's
Division of Privacy and Identity Protection.
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