Facebook Face Recognition Violates Law, German Agency Says
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Facebook Inc.’s facial-recognition feature violates European and German data protection law and the biggest social network should delete data derived from the function, a German state watchdog said.
The software evaluates faces on uploaded photos according to physical features and saves them, creating what may be “the world’s largest database of biometric features,” Hamburg’s agency for data protection and information security said in a statement on its website yesterday. Facebook may be fined if it refuses to comply with the demands, Sebastian Wirth, who oversees technology companies for the watchdog, said via phone.