Artist uses FindFace to identify St Petersburg subway passengers
A Russian artist used facial recognition app FindFace to identify passengers on St. Petersburg's subway system, resulting in concerns about the invasiveness of the technology and the end of anonymity. Egor Tsvetkov photographed random passengers on the St. Petersburg subway and used FindFace to match the pictures to the individuals’ pages on Russian social network Vkontakte. Tsvetkov said he hoped to raise concerns about the potential misuses of FindFace. Per GlobalVoices , Tsvetkov appears to have inspired a campaign to identify and harass Russian porn actresses and prostitutes. FindFace founder Maxim Perlin told TJournal that he could not prevent people from using his service to harass women, while pointing out that distributing pornography illegally in Russia is a felony. System 🤖 FindFace 🔗 Operator: Egor Tsvetkov Developer: NtechLab Country: Russia Sector: Media/entertainment/sports/arts Purpose: Identify individuals Technology: Fac ial recognition Issue: Privacy
- Date it happened
- 2016-04-01
- Organisation involved
- Egor Tsvetkov
- Product, system or model
- FindFace
This incident was imported from AIAAIC and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.
This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.