engine - 10:48 am on Aug 5, 2012 (gmt 0)

Norway's Regulator Questions Privacy Implications Of Facebook's Facial Recognition [bloomberg.com]

Facebook Inc. (FB) is being probed by Norway’s data-protection regulator over concerns a facial- recognition program that automatically suggests people’s names to tag in pictures breaches privacy rights. “It’s a very powerful tool Facebook has and it’s not yet clear how it all really works,” Bjorn Erik Thon, Norway’s data- protection commissioner, said in a phone interview today. “They have pictures of hundreds of millions of people. What material Facebook has in its databases is something we need to discuss with them.” Data-protection regulators from the 27-nation European Union have been looking into Facebook’s facial-recognition feature. Earlier this year, the EU’s so-called Article 29 Data Protection Working Party said the feature can only be used with people’s consent.