Facebook's face-recognition tool stirs privacy concerns

PALO ALTO, Calif. (NEWSCORE) - Facebook Inc. stoked fresh concerns from privacy advocates and lawmakers in the US and Europe after it rolled out on Wednesday technology that uses facial recognition to identify people in photos on its website. Chris Penn, Vice President of Strategy and Innovation at Blue Sky Factory , recently joined the FOX 25 Morning News to talk more about this issue. Watch Kim's interview for more.

The technology was designed to help Facebook users mark friends in photos as they upload them to the social networking site. Facebook first introduced the technology to US users in December and added it to most of the rest of the world this week, prompting privacy advocates globally to take a second look.

Face-recognition technology is just the latest Facebook product that privacy advocates say goes over the line. They say it raises concerns that Facebook has built a potentially sensitive database of its more than 600 million users based on their facial characteristics.

It reprises a longstanding divide with privacy advocates over whether new Facebook services should be automatically turned on for users who might not be aware of them. The face-recognition tool is enabled by default.

The need for users to opt-out of the service drew some ire from Congress. On Wednesday, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said Facebook ought to have made the technology "opt-in" for users.

"If this new feature is as useful as Facebook claims, it should be able to stand on its own, without an automatic sign-up that changes users' privacy settings without their permission," Markey said.

In a statement, a Facebook spokesman said the company "should have been more clear with people during the roll-out process when this became available to them."

The spokesman said the technology only makes suggestions when people add new photos to the site, and it only suggests identities from a users' existing set of friends on the site. "If for any reason someone doesn't want their name to be suggested, they can disable the feature in their Privacy Settings," wrote the spokesman in an email.

"Facebook users thought they were simply tagging their friends. Turns out Facebook was building an image profile database to automate online identification," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy group based in Washington. His organization currently has a complaint pending with the Federal Trade Commission regarding changes to Facebook's privacy settings, he said.

At least one regulator in Europe also said it was investigating the technology. Ciara O'Sullivan, a spokeswoman for Ireland's data protection authority said the organization is investigating the feature, and is seeking input from Facebook.

Read more: Wall Street Journal