Social network must stop programme and delete data already collected on users – or face fines up to €300,000, says official
Facebook is threatened with legal action in Germany over its facial recognition software, which critics say violates privacy and data protection laws.
The tool runs all photos uploaded to the social networking site through a programme and identifies the user's friends on each picture. There was an outcry when it was rolled out in June to more than 500m members worldwide, though users can opt out of the automatic tagging, Facebook can still gather and store (indefinitely) all photos added to the site.
Now Hamburg's data protection official has written to Facebook to demand it stops running the facial recognition programme on German users and deletes any related data. Johannes Caspar said the German authorities would take action if Facebook did not comply and could face fines of up to €300,000 (£262,000).
"Should Facebook maintain the function, it must ensure that only data from persons who have declared consent to the storage of their biometric facial profiles be stored in the database," he said. The software offered potential for "considerable abuse" and was illegal.
It's not the first time multinational technology firms have hit problems in Germany, which takes online privacy much more seriously than many other countries. In April, Google said it would not be collecting any more pictures for its German Street View project. The decision followed a series of objections after the mapping of 20 German cities for the service, which takes pictures of every street and property within a municipality. Germany's privacy laws generally restrict photographs of people and property except in public places, such as a sporting event, without a person's consent.
"The legal situation is clear in my opinion," Caspar told Wednesday's Hamburger Abendblatt. "If the data were to get into the wrong hands, then someone with a picture taken on a mobile phone could use biometrics to compare the pictures and make an identification," he said. Such a system could be used by undemocratic governments to spy on the opposition or by security services around the world. "The right to anonymity is in danger," he said.
Caspar is backed by the federal consumer protection ministry. "We expect Facebook to comply with all European and German data protection standards and for it to respond to the request from the Hamburg regional data protection officer," said a spokeswoman.
A Facebook spokeswoman told Spiegel Online the company was looking at Caspar's request, but that it "firmly rejected any accusations that we are not complying with our obligations to European Union data protection laws".
An estimated 75bn photos have been uploaded to Facebook since it was set up by Mark Zuckerberg as an online directory for Harvard University students in 2004.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/03/facebook-facial-recognition-privacy-germany
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