Facial recognition technology has advanced rapidly, and its integration into social media provides gee-whiz features to users as well as plenty of opportunities to marketers. It also interests government actors, who already have ways, through subpoenas and otherwise, to harvest both public and non-public information from social media providers without notice to users. [Trevor Timm, The Guardian (“Think it’s cool Facebook can auto-tag you in pics? So does the government”)]

Filed under: Fourth Amendment, social media, subpoenas, surveillance