由电子隐私信息中心(Electronic Privacy Information Center)牵头的各消费者组织说，脸书(Facebook)因使用其人脸识别软件而侵犯了用户隐私权。
它们向联邦政府提出投诉，投诉重点是识别被上传到其网站的照片中人物的脸书软件。
这一消费者组织联盟星期五向联邦贸易委员会(FTC)提出投诉说，这家社交媒体巨头“经常性地未经图像主体同意而扫描照片以获取人脸匹配的生物识别数据。”
投诉书说，脸书公司试图通过欺骗性地鼓励用户参与识别照片人物的过程而改进其人脸识别能力。
投诉书说，“这种个人识别是人们不想要的、非必要的，也是危险的，破坏了用户隐私，无视脸书用户的明确偏好，而且违反了几个州和世界很多地区的法律。”
这些团体坚称，用户几乎无能为力，难以防止他们的面孔被上传到脸书这样的社交媒体系统。他们说，人脸扫描可能会被威权政府滥用。脸书可能会被要求向政府提供用户信息。这是这些组织的一个关键论证。
这是联邦贸易委员会已经在调查的与隐私有关的一系列事件的最新一起。脸书被指控允许剑桥分析(Cambridge Analytica)获取8千7百万脸书用户的个人信息。这家英国咨询公司在2016年美国总统竞选期间受雇于川普团队。
Facebook violates its users’ privacy rights through the use of its facial recognition software, according to consumer groups led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Their complaint to the federal government focuses on the use of Facebook software that identifies people in photographs that are uploaded to its site.
A complaint filed Friday by a coalition of consumer organizations with Federal Trade Commission said the social media giant “routinely scans photos for biometric facial matches without the consent of the image subject.”
The complaint says the company tries to improve its facial recognition prowess by deceptively encouraging users to participate in the process of identifying people in photographs.
“This unwanted, unnecessary, and dangerous identification of individuals undermines user privacy, ignores the explicit preferences of Facebook users, and is contrary to law in several state and many parts of the world.”
The groups maintain there is little users can do to prevent images of their faces from being in a social media system like Facebook’s. They contend facial scanning can be abused by authoritarian governments, a key argument considering Facebook may be required to provide user information to governments.
The complaint is the latest in a string of privacy-related issues the FTC is already investigating, including charges it allowed the personal information of 87 million users to be improperly harvested by Cambridge Analytica, the British consulting firm which was hired by U.S. President Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign.