Facial Recognition Called on to End Chatroulette’s Pervert Problem

Since Chatroulette's inception, the site's notorious genital-flashers have been driving off advertisers and normal folks more than the founders would like to admit. But now, thanks to a Business Insider contest called “Solve Chatroulette's Penis Problem and Help It Make Billions and Billions,” facial recognition may be coming to the rescue.

The contest winner, John Spyers, a senior project manager from Missouri, explains:

"Not one of the people I've encountered displaying their wares on Chatroulette shows their face. So, utilize a facial recognition scan or brief eye tracking scan before making connections. If there's no facial recognition, then pixilate [the] image and prompt to accept cam feed."

Why not go the other way and do penis recognition? The technology would be too easily fooled by a banana or other phallic object, Spyders said. And apparently a lot of people eat bananas on Chatroulette.

Cell Phone App Raises Privacy Concerns

Although Recognizr, a new cell phone app, is still just a prototype, it’s already earning criticism for potential privacy concerns. Here’s how it works: You point your iPhone at someone, take a photo and click “Recognize.” The facial recognition software analyzes the image and identifies the person based on social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. It then links the image with their other information, like phone numbers and e-mail addresses.


Here’s a video of the prototype at work:





These days it seems like anything linked to the words “facial recognition” immediately raises privacy concerns. But apparently Recognizr requires a fairly stationary, head-on image to successfully identify someone, so it’s doubtful that you’re going to get “recognized” without your permission. Also, it’s unclear whether the photographer has to be friends with the subject on Facebook or MySpace for the app to access his or her information.

Facebook: The New Look of Surveillance

http://www.alternet.org/story/72556/

Facebook sparked an immediate national uproar when it was launched in 2002. Today, the activism has waned, and the surveillance continues largely unabated.

People know their actions are tracked online, says a Facebook spokesperson, just
as they're tracked on streets filled with surveillance cameras, whether
privately controlled through an ATM or publicly controlled [for] legitimate
anticrime or anti-terrorism purposes. In an era of massive top-down
surveillance, posting information on a website may feel downright redundant.

Facebook's growing dominance reflects a society that is increasingly complacent with spying. And while social networking is a free and convenient service, abdicating control of personal information, photos, writing, videos, and memories seems like a high price to pay