There’s a company called Riya that offers software to search personal photos using face recognition technology. Jennifer Granick of Stanford law school wrote a piece about it and its privacy implications, but her take is old and doesn’t see the big picture. Yes, face recognition technology changes society in ways that no longer allows the type of anonymity we have been used to, but that’s not the story here. The news — and it’s GOOD news — is that the government no longer has a monopoly on this piece of surveillance tech. That means the threat of living in a big brother state actually decreases, as it allows anyone to watch the watchers. Moore’s law keeps making technology more accessible and that promotes liberty.
Face recognition tech goes mainstream