消費者組織：臉書人臉識別軟件侵犯隱私權

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.由電子隱私信息中心(Electronic Privacy Information Center)牽頭的各消費者組織說，臉書(Facebook)因使用其人臉識別軟件而侵犯了用戶隱私權。

它們向聯邦政府提出投訴，投訴重點是識別被上傳到其網站的照片中人物的臉書軟件。

這一消費者組織聯盟星期五向聯邦貿易委員會(FTC)提出投訴說，這家社交媒體巨頭“經常性地未經圖像主體同意而掃描照片以獲取人臉匹配的生物識別數據。”

投訴書說，臉書公司試圖通過欺騙性地鼓勵用戶參與識別照片人物的過程而改進其人臉識別能力。

投訴書說，“這種個人識別是人們不想要的、非必要的，也是危險的，破壞了用戶隱私，無視臉書用戶的明確偏好，而且違反了幾個州和世界很多地區的法律。”

這些團體堅稱，用戶幾乎無能爲力，難以防止他們的面孔被上傳到臉書這樣的社交媒體系統。他們說，人臉掃描可能會被威權政府濫用。臉書可能會被要求向政府提供用戶信息。這是這些組織的一個關鍵論證。

這是聯邦貿易委員會已經在調查的與隱私有關的一系列事件的最新一起。臉書被指控允許劍橋分析(Cambridge Analytica)獲取8千7百萬臉書用戶的個人信息。這家英國諮詢公司在2016年美國總統競選期間受僱於川普團隊。