A new Facebook application may resurrect your detagged photos
Many people with Facebook accounts have logged on to Facebook to find a photo of them tagged that they would rather not have others see. Sometimes the photo is so embarrassing or scandalous that the person depicted in the photo will ask the poster of the photo to remove the photo from Facebook. But often, detagging the photo is a reasonable alternative: although the photo will still be accessible through Facebook, others’ attention is no longer drawn to the photo by a tag and the photo is rendered into practical obscurity. In other words, the photo is difficult to find and is accessible only by browsing through the poster’s entire photo album.
Face.com’s Photo Finder application may mean that photo de-tagging is no longer a realistic option. Photo Finder is a facial recognition application designed for Facebook that will traverse through all of a user’s photos and all the photos of friends that are accessible to the user and attempt to recognize faces. Thus, if I can see Sally’s photos and install the Photo Finder application, the application can also see Sally’s photos. Photo Finder will then “auto-tag” those photos it thinks contains Sally’s face. Note that an “auto-tag” only exists within the Photo Finder application—the “auto-tag” is not stored on the Facebook photo itself—so a person who does not have Photo Finder installed would not know of the “auto-tag.” After Photo Finder “auto-tags” Sally’s photo, any of Sally’s friends with the Photo Finder application installed can see her “auto-tagged” photo unless Sally user chooses to hide the “auto-tag” first through the Photo Finder application.
As Professor Desai noted regarding iPhoto’s facial recognition software, this type of technology can have tremendous implications for (government) tracking of individuals. Although the Photo Finder developers state that they’re “not about encouraging stalkers, embarrassing anyone, or selling information to some basement dwelling government orgs,” this is a potentially unavoidable result of their application’s existence. And while face.com promises not to sell the information to the government, I wonder if the fourth amendment would preclude the government from using the Photo Finder technology. After all, doesn’t posting photos on Facebook constitute a voluntary conveyance of information? Would allowing your photo to be taken implicate the third party doctrine, thus barring any reasonable expectation of privacy? Would a user’s acquiescence to a photo remaining on Facebook when detagged bear on the fourth amendment analysis?
It’s not so far-fetched to think that Facebook photos will be used by the government against a defendant. Although there is no suggestion that face.com’s Photo Finder application was used in this scenario, already Facebook photos have been offered to show that an underage DUI defendant was not complying with a court order to abstain from alcohol consumption and to avoid being around people who are drinking. Presumably those photos were tagged; but even if they were not, Photo Finder possibly could have been used to locate those damning photos if they were posted on Facebook. In the context of divorce proceedings, Time Magazine reported that Facebook profiles have been referred to as “evidentiary gold mines.”
Currently, the Photo Finder privacy protections are too limited; they must be expanded to protect user privacy sufficiently. Currently, Photo Finder allows Sally to hide her “auto-tag” on photos in which Photo Finder thinks Sally is pictured. However, to hide this “auto-tag,” Sally must actually install Photo Finder, which in turn will grant Photo Finder access to scan potentially even more photos that might contain Sally. Although Photo finder is in alpha testing now, Sally can still install the application to view the photos that Photo Finder has found of her so far and choose to hide the “auto-tag” it placed on those photos; but without an invitation to be an alpha tester, she will not be able to view her friends’ “auto-tags.”
Improving privacy controls on Photo Finder should not be too difficult. First, users absolutely should be given the option to opt-out of having their photos scanned and having any of their “auto-tags” appear to anyone, ever, in the Photo Finder application. Thus, Sally should be able to say to Photo Finder, “never auto-tag me.” If Sally does not opt-out of the Photo Finder application, Sally should be given advanced notice when Photo Finder detects Sally in an otherwise untagged photo. Sally should then be given a limited period of time to respond before Photo Finder broadcasts that embarrassing photo’s existence to others. I wish Facebook itself would implement a similar privacy control with photo tagging, rather than making tags accessible instantaneously. Facebook users need to be given more control over a third party’s actions on Facebook that implicate the user.
Although Photo Finder is a new technology, the privacy concerns it raises seem eerily similar to Facebook’s development and release of the newsfeed in 2006–before the newsfeed was incorporated into Facebook, information Sally placed on her Facebook profile was not broadcasted to her friends; rather, Sally’s friend would have to visit Sally’s profile to view any updates. Facebook only implemented privacy controls for the newsfeed after users protested the broadcasting of information that was once practically obscure. And to date, the protest group still contains over 182,000 members. And now I fear that the Photo Finder application raises similar concerns, as it provides the capability to broadcast the existence of photos that Sally detagged in the first instance with no significant privacy controls. Will protests against Facebook and the face.com developers be forthcoming? Only time will tell.
Users, beware. If you think that simply detagging a photo is a good solution to maintain your privacy, think again. With face.com’s Photo Finder now in existence, asking the poster of the photo to remove it may be the only way. If you’re concerned that Photo Finder may have found untagged or detagged photos of you already, you should consider installing the application to see if it has found any photos depicting you.
