It’s no surprise anymore, when a new trend in mobile technology emerges. Every time I turn around there’s some new device or app that has captivated the people around me.
Whether it’s a new iPhone 5 or 6 or 10 or whatever, a Samsung God-knows-what, or Snapchat or Kik…you can barely blink before there’s some newfangled thing that you must absolutely try, and that everyone else already seems to be more savvy of.
It can be a new phone with a nifty built-in exploding battery feature, or a new app that is testing the tenuous boundary between what is innovative and downright creepy, but sometimes these technological leaps forward aren’t as much leaps as they are just glorified stumbling. Russian company NTechLab has exemplified that, with a new app entitled FindFace.
FindFace allows users to take a photo of anyone and match that person’s face up to a profile on social media.This entire process is instantaneous, and allows people to identify complete strangers at a glance.
Media responding to this app (and the tremendous affront to privacy that it represents) have compared it to the kinds of dystopian facial recognition technologies found in movies like the Bourne series, or any imaginary sci-fi world where the bad guys spy on the populace.
George Orwell and Aldous Huxley are spinning in their graves at the prospect of something like FindFace, since this is exactly the kind of thing they warned us about in their writing.
To be fair, FindFace isn’t the first technology that monitors people. Google and Facebook have been practicing that art for years now, grabbing search data and profile information to glean keywords from which they can discern trends to tailor what advertisements they show you.
I’m not entirely comfortable with that, but there are limits to how much they can learn about me through such a method.
Some businesses like casinos are attempting to use FaceFind’s technology as a force for good, using it to identify cheaters and improve security. That’s good for them, and I understand that utility.
But sensible, safe use for business is one thing. If I don’t want cameras scanning my face and digging up personal information about me, I can just avoid casinos or stores that use that technology. I can minimize my presence on Facebook and not use a Google account if I don’t want them tracking my behaviour online with any reliability.
A common undercurrent of thematic anxiety in books, moviesTV shows depicting facial recognition technology is that it can be used by big shady governments or organizations to monitor people’s every movement. That is a valid concern, sure, but I’m more worried about the far more immediate threat of strangers passing me by on the streets being able to dig up a character sketch of me in seconds.
I’m far more uncomfortable about not knowing who may or may not be watching me because that technology is so freely available. Reading through what I’ve typed in a search bar or watching how I behave at a business are in an entirely different league than what FindFace allows people to do.
I don’t want strangers to be able to learn my name, learn about my interests and who I know, and get a rough idea of how and where I live my life, just by taking my picture in the street.
I’m not paranoid, but I love my privacy. In my line of work it’s not difficult to track me down. I’m obviously not famous, but I’m far easier to identify than any other Sam Macdonald that doesn’t work in the media.
I feel that my concerns are validated by the abuse FaceFind has already been exploited for in St. Petersburg, where people have been using public photos of Russian porn actresses getting on the subway, captured with FaceFind, to track them down and harass them.
Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have declared that such technology needs to be handled with care, so that its potential security benefits are balanced with the hazards to safety and privacy it represents. Given that something so potentially powerful has already been distributed to the public in something as casual as an app, I’d say it’s going to be difficult to achieve that balance.
