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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

A Russian photographer took photos of strangers on the St. Petersburg metro [globalvoices.org] and used a facial recognition app [findface.ru] to match faces with profiles on the VKontakte social network:

A Russian photographer has proved how easy it is to track down people on social media using facial recognition software. Yegor Tsvetkov took photos of strangers on St Petersburg's metro and used a facial recognition app which trawls through profiles on VKontakte, Russia's biggest social network, to track down their online profiles. Named "Your Face is Big Data" [globalvoices.org], the series of photographs shows how powerful facial recognition software has become, to the point that a complete stranger can find you at the click of a button.

Tsvetkov told the Guardian the project aimed to show technology can affect privacy, particularly if you don't activate the relevant settings on your social media profiles. "Nobody noticed that I photographed them, but I used a simple camera and I didn't try to hide it," he said. "One girl in the project texted me after the publication and said that it was a bad feeling when she saw herself ... but she fully understood my idea." He added that the project had highlighted the difference between the persona people present online and in real life.

A Global Voices Advocacy Director complained about the ethics of the project:

This is ethically problematic on a few levels. Tsvetkov did not have permission to take or publish these photos. And he made no effort to obscure the identities of his unknowing subjects.

He could argue that the photos taken on the metro are no more or less revealing than the images that the subjects themselves posted on VK, but choosing to post your photo on a semi-public social media platform is not the same thing as choosing to post it elsewhere in the Internet. Context matters — a photo of a woman in a pretty dress may seem perfectly innocent in the context of a social network, but when displayed in a series of images presented through a stalker-like lens, the image starts to say something different.

Tsvetkov is also making their images more prominent and easier to find. Various legal cases have taken into account the idea of "discoverability"—that the impact or power of a piece of online content may be affected by how easily it can be found or "discovered".

Russian interview [birdinflight.com] with unblurred photographs.

Original Submission