ON POINT: Does your face reveal too much?

By Denise M. Champagne The Daily Record Newswire Looking into people's faces may reveal their gender, approximate age and what they are feeling. A person's face helps other people recognize them, but technology already exists that allows a facial image, or faceprint, to reveal much more information such as a name, address, finances or an arrest record, something Congress is looking into regulating. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., who chaired a hearing last week, presented a scenario to an identification company representative in which someone in a bar takes a woman's photograph with a cell phone and then uses that to access an address and stalk her. Brian Martin, director of biometric research at MorphoTrust USA in New Jersey, said it would not be easy to do; additional information would be needed. Franken was chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law in a hearing on "What Facial Recognition Means for Privacy and Civil Liberties." He opened by saying there is nothing inherently wrong with facial recognition technology and that like any other new and powerful technology, it can be used for great good. "But if we do not stop and carefully consider the way we use this technology, it may also be abused in ways that could threaten basic aspects of our privacy and civil liberties," Franken said. "I called this hearing so we can start that conversation." Citing Facebook's "tagging"program and an FBI facial recognition pilot program, Franken said facial recognition may be thought of as something from a science fiction movie, but that it exists and Congress may need to act as it did in 1968 when it passed the Wiretap Act requiring police to get a warrant before listening in on private telephone conversations. Martin, who is responsible for the research and development of his company's biometric search engine, talked about how facial recognition technology works, its accuracy and limitations, different categories of facial recognition and how the technology relates to privacy. First studied in the late 1980s and becoming popular in the mid 1990s, Martin said facial recognition technology has matured and can be used to help prevent identity fraud, provide leads in criminal investigations and fight terrorism. He said a 2010 report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology determined the best facial recognition algorithms, in controlled environments with cooperative subjects, could correctly determine if two faces belong to the same person 99.7 percent of the time, up from 50 percent in 1997. The accuracy diminishes in low lighting or when people are not looking directly into the camera. Maneesha Mithal, associate director of the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection in the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection, testified facial recognition technologies are being used commercially in numerous ways, such as digital signs, mobile applications and social networks. The FTC conducted a "Face Facts" workshop in December to look at how the technologies are being used and can be used. She said 2.5 billion photos are uploaded to the Internet every month and that some applications allow companies to identify what mood a person may be in while playing a video game. She said in the future, the technology could be implemented to match an unidentified person in a public setting with a Facebook photo, or mobile applications will be able to identify people and correlate them with a name and address in real time, raising serious safety concerns. The FBI, according to a deputy director, is operating a facial recognition pilot program in three states that allows law enforcement agencies to search a national database of criminal mug shots to try to match photos taken from social networking sites, surveillance cameras and similar sources. Jerome Pender, deputy assistant director, FBI Criminal Justice Information Services Division, also testified searches are subject to all federal rules regarding access to the FBI's database by authorized criminal justice agencies. He said the FBI began collecting criminal histories on a national level in 1924. The pilot program, which will be fully operational in all states in mid-2014, marks the first time facial recognition will be used in processing mug shots for criminal investigation leads. Pender said the goal of the pilot program is to test facial recognition processes, solidify privacy procedures and address concerns. Franken said the term "criminal justice purpose" is broad and that he was concerned the technology would allow law enforcement to identify people protesting or marching in a rally. Pender said officers must clearly state their suspicions and have a reasonable basis for performing a search of the database and that using it on any other pretext would be invalid. The convergence of face recognition technology, online social networks and data mining has made it possible to use publicly available data and inexpensive off-the-shelf technologies to find out information about people starting with an anonymous face, according to Alessandro Acquisti, a Carnegie Mellon University professor in its CyLab. He used a digital camera in an experiment last year and off-the-shelf facial recognition software, identifying by name one of every three students walking across campus. In another experiment, researchers were able to match anonymous people from a popular dating site and compare them to Facebook to get their identifications. Acquisti said the process for facial recognition undermines notions of privacy and could chill free speech by identifying people in a public protest. In other scenarios, he said the technology could be used to find missing children and could also infer someone's credit score the minute they walk into a car dealership. Acquisti said control over personal data will be fierce and firms will engage in progressively more aggressive identification procedures. Robert Sherman, manager of Facebook's privacy and public policy, explained the social network's tagging feature which allows friends to share photos with one another, something the company learned early on was important to its users. He said users have control over allowing tagging or removing a photo in which they were tagged. He said Facebook is transparent about the use of technology and has privacy settings to allow a user to opt out. Franken concluded by asking Jennifer Lynch, a staff attorney for Electronic Frontier Foundation in California what things Congress should consider if it were to pass a law regarding facial recognition technology. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an Internet defense league to fight for people's rights in the digital world. Lynch said lawmakers should look at how law enforcement is getting its data; whether it is coming from criminal records or collected from people on the street or third parties such as bank records. She said she would like to see a warrant be required for the collection of sensitive data that could be obtained from facial recognition technology and have government limited to how much it is allowed to collect. The July 18 hearing was recorded and is available on the committee's website at www.judiciary.senate.gov. Published: Wed, Jul 25, 2012