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NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Thursday, October 27, 2016

1984 - Facebook & Google are building massive data bases on everyone



Facebook & Google
Partners with Big Brother in Spying on You

  • The growing Police State is already being provided mountains of data by companies like Verizon and Yahoo from your private email and phone records. 
  • Now face and voice recognition data bases are being built to be shared with Big Brother on demand.


(Bloomberg)  -  Facebook Inc.’s software knows your face almost as well as your mother does. And like mom, it isn’t asking your permission to do what it wants with old photos.
While millions of internet users embrace the tagging of family and friends in photos, others worried there’s something devious afoot are trying block Facebook as well as Google from amassing such data.
As advances in facial recognition technology give companies the potential to profit from biometric data, privacy advocates see a pattern in how the world’s largest social network and search engine have sold users’ viewing histories for advertising. The companies insist that gathering data on what you look like isn’t against the law, even without your permission.
If judges agree with Facebook and Google, they may be able to kill off lawsuits filed under a unique Illinois law that carries fines of $1,000 to $5,000 each time a person’s image is used without permission -- big enough for a liability headache if claims on behalf of millions of consumers proceed as class actions. A loss by the companies could lead to new restrictions on using biometrics in the U.S., similar to those in Europe and Canada.
Facebook declined to comment on its court fight. Google declined to comment on pending litigation. 
Courts have struggled over what qualifies as an injury to pursue a privacy case in lawsuits accusing Facebook and Google of siphoning users’ personal information from e-mails and monitoring their web browsing habits. Suits over selling the data to advertisers have often failed. 
This year, the U.S. Supreme Court set a “concrete injury” standard for privacy suits, a ruling that both sides are using to argue their case ahead of a hearing Thursday in San Francisco over Facebook’s bid to dismiss the biometrics case.
Google is fending off suits in Chicago, arguing that the Illinois statute can’t apply outside the state under the Constitution’s interstate commerce rules. Google also contends the Illinois law doesn’t regulate photos.
Facebook encourages users to "tag" people in photographs they upload in their personal posts and the social network stores the collected information. The company uses a program it calls DeepFace to match other photos of a person. Alphabet Inc.’s cloud-based Google Photos service uses similar technology.
The billions of images Facebook is thought to be collecting could be even more valuable to identity thieves than the names, addresses, and credit card numbers now targeted by hackers, according to privacy advocates and legal experts.
Read More . . . .

Creepy New Software Set To Bend Reality




Everywhere you go you are currently being scanned and your actions placed in data bases that will be shared with the Government on demand.

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Big Brother is Listening Youk
Why did Google, for example, recently decide to offer free 411 service? I haven't talked to people at Google, but it's pretty clear to me why. It's because of speech recognition. It has nothing to do with 411 service: it has to do with getting a database of voices, so they don't have to license speech technology from Nuance or someone else.
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Tim O'Reilly



2 comments:

GOODSTUFF said...

there is no doubt that the alphabet soup and data miners are using Facebook data

However, users are giving "them" (alphabet soup and data miners) the data

There’s something devious afoot with the lawsuits filed under the unique Illinois law

Gary said...

I find it interesting that the "evil" ACLU is fighting against the unconstitutional 1984 spy state while the "small government" GOP fully funds every unconstitutional Big Brother program out there.