International CES 2013 announces expansion of public policy focus, to explore facial recognition

The Consumer Electronics Association, the producer of the annual International CES conference, has announced a broad array of panel discussions to be held at the Innovation Policy Summit during the 2013 International CES, including an in-depth panel discussing the policy implications of the deployment of facial recognition technology.

2013 International CES takes place January 8-11 in Las Vegas, NV.

Coinciding with the start of the next U.S. Congressional session, the CES Innovation Policy Summit includes top government officials, entrepreneurs and policy experts who will underscore the relationship between technology innovation and public policies while addressing major issues impacting American innovators and U.S. competitiveness.

The focus on the implementation of facial recognition technology is an unsurprising addition to the International CES program as iterations of this emerging biometric technology continue to pop-up in the mainstream, ruffling feathers and inciting many privacy concerns.

As previously reported in BiometricUpdate.com, two porn sites are offering a free facial recognition service to match user-uploaded images with live models and visual matches in videos online. Also, Italian mannequin maker, Almax, has introduced the EyeSee, a mannequin that spies on customers and uses facial recognition to log the age, gender and race of customers walking by. Likewise, NEC has launched a facial recognition service for retailers that also profiles customers using facial recognition to track shopping habits and customer regularity.

Also reported previously in BiometricUpdate.com, recent studies have shown that freely available facial recognition search engines used by popular social networks like Facebook are as reliable and accurate as some specialist solutions sold to government agencies, ultimately opening access to sophisticated uses of this technology.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  education  |  Facebook  |  facial recognition  |  privacy  |  research