[geeks] Google Images Facial Recognition!

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Brian Dunbar <brian.dunbar at liftport.com>
>Date: 2007/05/31 Thu PM 06:59:16 CDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Google Images Facial Recognition!

>Mark wrote:
<snip>

>> You don't even find it remotely worrying that google have started  
>> tracking faces? What if they refine it to pick out a persons face  
>> from Google images eh?
>> 
>
>No, I don't.

Nor do I.

>You assume this ability is technically possible; let's go with that
>assumption.
>
>If it can be done it will be.  You can't stop it - it's Brin's
>Transparent Society for the 21st century.  Far better that Google does
>it than the FBI.

The effort to implement this in real-time (the only way this is even remotely interesting) is mind-boggling complex. It would require an infinite number of cameras, an inventory of all the "interesting" faces, and a large enough data processing complex to filter all the interesting faces out of the feeds from that infinite number of cameras...

Google can't "watch" you cat in the window, it can show that your cat *was* in the window at one point in time. Google didn't "enter" the house and locate the cat, Google just saw what *anyone* on the street could have seen with their naked eyes...

Lionel