Uncle Sam is Watching You (Face Book Pictures)

Facebook: The challenges ahead for the social network

 

 

Facebook's acquisition of facial recognition software face.com is concerning from a privacy perspective for two reasons.
First, it is unclear what Facebook intends to do with the facial recognition data face.com collected. Face.com has stated that its database includes over 30 billion face prints. 
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The United States government regularly asks for copies of all photographs in which a user is tagged when it issues a warrant to Facebook. And government agencies in the States and abroad that are building out facial recognition databases have an interest in acquiring as many face images as possible.
Face.com and Facebook's combined data could become a honeypot for government if Facebook doesn't take steps to protect it properly. 


 In other words, Big Uncle Sam is watching you.
It is a trueism that if information is gathered, for even the most innocent of purposes, the Lawyers will issue supena's to get it and use it in law cases. Use it to build no fly lists , use it to deny insurance claims , use use use in a million ways you never intended when you put up that photo of Uncle Bob barfing all over the table that christmas evening when he had way waaay too much to drink last year.

Stories regularily make the news about employers demanding the password to your face book before they hire you , insurance companies turning down claims , and even just recently some guy made a cheap no-budget movie railing against islam and posted it on youtube.com and now the terrorists want to kill him and all the actors / actresses in that movie.

And what did the United States do to protect their own citizen who had exercised his rights to free speach ? They told the world his real name , tried to publish his picture (he got smart and covered it when he was arrested ) and now seeks any lame excuse at all to punish him for his "crimes" the crime of free speach , because it's inconvenient to them.

And good luck trying to get your face book account deleted . They flatly refuse to do that. You put something up , it's up forever.

My face book account has an ancient 10 year old picture of me when I had a full beard , and a few rants against what a security hazard Face Book is , and thats about it.

You wanna protest something or express any kind of radical opinion ? You wanna exercise your free speach ? Get an anonymous blog.  You want to put your photo's online for the whole world to see ? The whole world will happily miss use the information for their own gain. Don't be surprised if a dozen credit cards are openned in your name the next week , and a month later they all come knocking on your door demanding you repay them the 100 000$ you apparently blew last month on a wild shopping spree.

Kids care coming up posting their whole lives online ,and facebook and the gang are totally refusing to delete anything. And thats going to injure all of us, going to injure the next generation. And thats just not acceptable.