- Meta reportedly licensed facial recognition technology from Rank One Computing, a company that supplies surveillance tools to the US military and police, and integrated it into its smart glasses app.
- The technology, called ‘NameTag,’ would create unique biometric faceprints of people captured by the camera of the glasses and check them against stored databases, effectively turning users into a surveillance network.
- Meta faces a history of legal trouble over biometric data, including a $650 million Illinois settlement and a $1.4 billion Texas settlement, raising serious privacy and consent concerns.
Meta is reportedly experimenting with facial recognition technology designed for police and military use. The company already has billions of pictures of the faces of people from Facebook and Instagram. This would put that power directly in the hands of governments.
Once your face enters such a system, you can never change it. Unlike a password, your face stays the same forever. This makes biometric data far more valuable and dangerous.
The news raises serious privacy concerns worldwide. Many people are asking what this means for their personal safety. The smart glasses project of the company appears to be at the center of these worries. Moreover, the technology comes from a firm that mainly serves government clients. This adds another layer of concern for privacy advocates.
The Source of the Technology
Meta licensed its facial recognition software from Rank One Computing, a Denver-based company. This firm earns roughly 80 percent of its revenue from government clients.
Its customers include the US Marshals Service, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and US Special Operations Command. The company also developed long-range facial recognition that can identify a face from up to one kilometer away. This technology was funded under a government research contract.
Rank One’s leadership adds to the concerns. The CEO of the company previously ran the biometric database unit of the FBI. Furthermore, its board comprises former CIA, FBI, and some Pentagon officials – this means Meta partnered with a firm deeply embedded in the US intelligence and military establishment. The company went public on the Nasdaq in February this year.
The license of Meta covered Rank One’s facial recognition software, along with liveness detection. Liveness detection checks whether a camera is looking at a real person or a photo. The license supported up to 10 million facial templates. This is a massive database capacity.
How the System Works
Code inside the AI app of Meta revealed the facial recognition feature, internally called ‘NameTag’. This feature would transform faces captured by the smart glasses of Meta into unique biometric signatures. These signatures are commonly known as faceprints. The system would check each faceprint against those stored on the phone of the user.
The database is designed to live on the phone of a user. However, the configuration allows it to receive updates from Meta. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF, verified the code through static analysis. The EFF points out that Meta is working with surveillance-powered glasses. This enables biometric tracking without the consent of the people.
In its article, the EFF noted that although there are billions of reasons for Meta not to, the company has likely created the ability to turn its users into a distributed surveillance system. This is a strong warning from a respected privacy group. The EFF also said this is one more reason to think twice before buying the Meta smart glasses.
The communications team of Meta has responded to the reports. The company said no final decisions have been made about launching the feature. Meta also stated it is not building a central face database; however, privacy experts remain skeptical.
Privacy Fears and Past Legal Troubles
Meta has a troubled history with facial recognition. The company previously faced a $650 million settlement in Illinois. This was over violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.
According to the law, organizations must obtain explicit consent from their users before capturing biometric information. The company’s privacy issues also include an Instagram recovery tool flaw that exposed about 20,000 accounts.
In 2021, Meta disabled the operation of its facial recognition system. Consequently, the company deleted all faceprint data of over one billion users.
Afterwards, another case occurred in Texas. Two years ago, Meta entered into a settlement worth $1.4 billion in a legal proceeding. Texas charged Meta with unlawfully obtaining and employing biometric information of millions of its residents. It is one of the biggest settlements of its kind. The law in Texas, officially known as CUBI, forbids the collection of biometrics without the approval of the owner.
The numerous legal problems indicate that Meta faced some tough times. The use of data related to the biometrics of people without legal documents can lead the company to serious legal problems. But the company does not seem to learn from its own mistakes and continues with the innovations.
The recent information does not ease the situation. A WIRED investigation reported that the company used facial biometrics illegally in its app. More than 50 million mobile phones have received the app. However, the company removed the illegal code after the incident. Still, there has not been any response from the company to explain its relations with Rank One.
