Julian Stratenschulte/European Pressphoto Agency
Facebook is under pressure from Wall Street to profit
from its vast trove of pictures, and also from regulators over the use
of personal information.
The company promised European regulators that it would forgo using
facial recognition software and delete the data used to identify
Facebook users by their pictures.
The decision could have wide repercussions on how facial recognition
technology — a particularly sensitive technological advance — is used
globally as surveillance cameras are increasingly installed in public
spaces.
“This is a big deal,” said Chris Hoofnagle, a law professor at the
University of California, Berkeley who specializes in online privacy.
“The development of these tools in the private sector directly affects
civil liberties,” he explained. “The ultimate application is going to be
— can we apply these patterns in video surveillance to automatically
identify people for security purposes and maybe for marketing purposes
as well?”
The agreement comes as Facebook is under pressure from Wall Street to profit from its vast trove of data, including pictures, and also from regulators worldwide over the use of personal information.
The decision in Europe applies to the “tag suggestion,” a Facebook
feature that deploys a sophisticated facial recognition tool to
automatically match pictures with names. When a Facebook user uploads a
photo of friends, the “tag suggestion” feature can automatically pull up
the names of the individuals in the image.
The facial recognition software was developed by an Israeli company, Face.com, which Facebook acquired for an undisclosed price in June.
The company quietly and temporarily pulled the plug on “tag suggestion”
for all Facebook users several months ago. The company said on Friday it
was to “make improvements to the tool’s efficiency” and did not say how
soon it would be restored. However, the company promised European
regulators on Friday that it would reinstate the feature on the
Continent only after getting their approval.
Facebook declined to say under what circumstances the “tag suggestions”
would be back online in the United States or elsewhere.
Facebook’s promise to the European regulators is part of an
investigation into whether the company’s data collection practices
comply with European privacy rules. It was made with regulators in
Ireland, where the company has its European headquarters.
“We will continue to work together to ensure we remain compliant with
European data protection law,” Facebook said in a statement.
Europe is an important market for the company, as it struggles to prove
its worth on Wall Street. About one in four Facebook users logs in from
Europe. According to the company’s earnings figures, Europe accounts for
just under a third of its advertising revenue.
Pictures have always been vital to Facebook. Pictures are what drew
users to Facebook in its earliest days, and pictures are what continue
to keep people coming back. Facebook users upload 300 million images a
day. The company’s acquisition of Instagram, the photo-sharing site,
eliminated its biggest rival in this area.
Photo tagging is important for Facebook in the sense that it allows the
social network to better analyze with whom its users interact in the
real world.
In addition to scrutiny from European regulators, Facebook has also come
under fire from consumer protection groups and lawmakers in the United
States over its use of facial recognition technology. At a hearing on
Capitol Hill last July, Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, described Facebook as the “world’s largest privately held database of face prints — without the explicit consent of its users.”
On Friday, Mr. Franken said in an e-mail statement that he hoped
Facebook would offer a way for American users to opt in to its
photographic database.
“I believe that we have a fundamental right to privacy, and that means
people should have the ability to choose whether or not they’ll be
enrolled in a commercial facial recognition database,” he said. “I
encourage Facebook to provide the same privacy protections to its
American users as it does its foreign ones.”
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in
Washington, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over
Facebook’s use of automatic tagging. The complaint is pending. The
commission has a consent order with Facebook that subjects the company
to audits over its privacy policies for the next 20 years.
Personal data is Facebook’s crown jewel, but how to use it artfully and profitably is arguably its biggest challenge.
Facebook has access to a tremendous amount of information about its one
billion users, including the photos they upload every day. Marketers
have pushed for greater access to that data, so as to tailor the right
message to the right customer. Consumers and lawmakers have resisted, to
different degrees in different countries around the world.
“They are pushing the edges of what privacy rules may allow, just as an
aggressive driver might with parking rules,” said Brian Wieser, an
analyst with the Pivotal Research Group, a research firm in New York.
“You don’t know you’ve broken a law until someone says you’ve broken a
law.”
Several independent application developers are experimenting with how to
use facial recognition technology in the real world, and have sought to
use pictures on Facebook to build products of their own.
For example, one company in Atlanta is developing an
application to allow Facebook users to be identified by cameras
installed in stores and restaurants. The
company, Redpepper, said in a blog post that users would have to
authorize the application to pull their most recent tagged photographs. The
company said its “custom-developed cameras then simply use this
existing data to identify you in the real world,” including by offering
special discounts and deals.
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