Well, you’ll soon be able to find out if this story on The Register is anything to go by.
The gist of it is that an ‘entrepreneur’ is about to launch a site which uses facial recognition technology to track someone down. Essentially, snap a picture of someone (very easy these days with a camera phone), upload it to this site & it will find other pictures of this person if they exist on the web. Find out where someone works! Find their blog & track down where they live!
The guy behind it, Nikolaj Nyholm, says that he is not ignorant of the implications that it could be used by all manner of stalkers and weirdo’s, but that there’s not much he can do about it.
Er, how about not launching a website where you can upload an unauthorised photo of someone & use it to track them down? Just a thought. Ask me again why there’s no photos of me on this site (or elsewhere…).
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That is creeepy
Chris,
I picked up your post via Technorati…
It’s not entirely true that we “cannot do anything about it”, and that’s entirely Mark Ballard’s words. We’ve been conscious of these things from the very onset and I wrote up a post on privacy and Polar Rose back before Christmas to detail some of our thoughts.
With regards to “simply not launching” Polar Rose, I obviously don’t agree. Such alternatives would be that only certain people (read security agencies of various sort) would have access to the technology, a scenario we know all to well as we previously dealt with that sector.
Ping me or write up more on the subject if you want to discuss. We obviously take this input seriously.
Regards,
Nikolaj
Good point, but I bet if you dug deep enough you could find photo of you on the net.
Hi Nikolaj, sometimes you forget what you write on your blog can be read by anyone
Fair enough, I was a little flippant & took my cue from The Reg’s take on it, but I do remain to be convinced that there’s a practical use for this service. For every ‘true-love’ tracking down that girl you saw on a train, there could be a very real stalker scenario. I accept you’re only making use of existing technology, and if not you, then someone else would, but still…
Anyway, I don’t moderate comments for opinion (yet!!) so please do come back & convince me. If you do, I’ll write another post on it.
Cheers,
Chris.
Chris,
Being able to comment on a blog post is something I surely hope doesn’t go away. In comparison, I’m having a parallel conversation with Mark Ballard from The Register, but by email.
While I’m personally a bit disappointed with The Register’s portrayal of us, I also recognize The Register’s mantra as default:sarcastic.
The true-love/stalking scenario is unlikely ever to happen as described for one dead-simple reason; the technology is simply not good enough to find that girl. A stalker would be much better off following her off the train or stealing her purse.
The primary purpose of Polar Rose is to discover photos and get richer information once browsing these. Likewise with the mobile search which will be within smaller collections (that of your friends, of sport stars, etc.) More at http://www.polarrose.com.
Again, I appreciate the opportunity to publicly comment.
Regards,
Nikolaj
Thanks for coming back. I think that’s why I read The Register daily, you can never have too much sarcasm
I’ve bookmarked Polar Rose & I’ll have a proper play with it, and maybe write something up in the near future (which I should probably have done to start with…) I’ve only been blogging a month & a half, and sometimes I forget I’m not talking to an empty room (although it sometimes seems like it!).
Good luck with your site. BTW Can we find your photo on it?
My photos are readily out there: at http://www.polarrose.com/press/ http://nyholm.net, http://www.23hq.com/tag/nikolajnyholm, etc.
But you’re right, we probably ought to be more up front about that on the primary pages of the website.
Thanks for keeping updated.
/n