facial recognition

Security used to be more or less the same on just about every phone. You could set up a PIN or pattern to keep nosy friends out, and there would almost always be a fingerprint sensor built into a home button underneath the display for faster access. These days, as bezels continue to shrink and phone makers simply don’t want anything but screen taking up space on the front of their phones, fingerprint sensors are starting to look a little different, and some are even going away entirely.

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In a Google Plus remark, Google said that it would block all facial recognition apps from Google Glasses

Glass and Facial Recognition

When we started the Explorer Program nearly a year ago our goal was simple: we wanted to make people active participants in shaping the future of this technology ahead of a broader consumer launch.  We’ve been listening closely to you, and many have expressed both interest and concern around the possibilities of facial recognition in Glass. As Google has said for several years, we won’t add facial recognition features to our products without having strong privacy protections in place. With that in mind, we won’t be approving any facial recognition Glassware at this time.

#IfIHadGlass winners are expected to begin receiving their Glass prototypes over the coming weeks. Clearly, this move is to help the new wave of  non-developers get along in a skeptical world.
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Google has acquired PittPatt, a company focused on facial recognition in photos, reports Wall Street Journal. While the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, Google will be receiving PittPatt’s brainy employees. PittPatt was founded by three “image analysis” and “pattern recognition” specialists whom have PhD’s from Carnegie Mellon University. PitPatt’s technology could go into a number of products — like Google Goggles or Google+.

Something worth noting is what Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt had to say at AllThingsD’s D9 conference in May regarding the matter of facial recognition:

Schmidt says he does have some concerns about the limits of technology, including combining face recognition with other technologies. Google, with Goggles, had moved pretty far down that path, but has stopped because of the implications.

“We built that technology and we withheld it,” Schmidt says.

People could use the stuff in a bad way in addition to a very good way.

A spokesperson told WSJ:

We’ve said that we won’t add face recognition to our apps or product features unless we have strong privacy protections in place, and that’s still the case