Germany: Facebook must destroy facial recognition database [1]
ars technica
by Jon Brodkin [2]- Aug 15 2012, 11:12am EDT
Says opt-out mechanism violates European Union law.
German data protection officials today accused Facebook of “illegally compiling a vast photo database of users without their consent” and demanded that the social network destroy its archive of files based on facial recognition technology, the New York Times [3] reported.
Facebook says [4] that it uses face recognition software to match users’ photos to others and suggest friends to tag in those photos. A user can prevent friends from seeing tag suggestions when they upload photos that look like that user. But this requires opting out through Facebook privacy settings, which Germany notes is a violation of European law.
To read the rest of this story, visit arstechnica.com. [5]