Zhongxin Jingwei client March 27 (Chang Tao intern Lang Jingning), wearing a mask has become a necessary "dress" for everyone to go out everyday or in the office. However, you may not expect that you can check in for attendance yourself or send a face photo wearing a mask on social platforms, which is being collected by some people and sold on the Internet. A seller told reporters at the Sino-Singapore Jingwei: "I have hundreds of thousands of face photos with masks in my hand, one dime for two cents, and more than 100,000 are discounted."

At present, face recognition technology with a face mask has been applied in practice. Therefore, leakage of face data with a face mask will also cause huge security risks. Hu Gang, deputy secretary-general of the Legal Affairs Committee of the China Internet Association, told the Sino-Singapore Jingwei client that face information is tied to identity verification. If face pictures are used illegally, individuals, businesses, and even national security may be harmed.

Photo by Changtao Xin Jingwei

"Photos of my face wearing a mask, how much do I have?"

Seller A said that he had about 20,000 face pictures wearing masks. "Half of them are crawling (worms) from the Internet, and half of them are from the real world." The seller said, "Some of the photos I crawled were models. , Some are public face datasets; the real-world part is the facial photos people take when they check in at work or enter or leave a community. "

The "crawl" in the seller's mouth refers to a "web crawler", which is a program or script that automatically captures online information according to certain rules. Some people liken the reptile to detecting machines, simulating human behaviors and going to different websites, and then backing the information they saw, "like a worm crawling tirelessly in a building".

Example from Seller A

As for how to obtain these real-world face pictures, the seller did not explain directly, but just said, “It ’s just a punch card to save it, and it ’s all new years (shooting), the time is very new, you must be in Not found online. "

The seller said: "We usually use these photos to do face mask recognition algorithm training. If you are sure, the mask wear recognition algorithm source code plus the data set totals 1,000 yuan. If you only want the face data set, it is 1,000 yuan. Links are always available on the web drive. "

Seller B introduced the reporter to Zhongxin Jingwei. The face image of his face wearing a mask came from social platforms such as circle of friends and Weibo. According to the seller, he has hundreds of thousands of such photos, "I have as many as you need, one for 2 cents, and a discount of more than 100,000."

Screenshot of chat with seller B

Example from Seller B

Subsequently, the seller sent a few examples. Zhongxin Jingwei reporter noticed that these examples are from the selfie angle. The characters in the photos wear masks, and they use different degrees of beauty.

Is it illegal to get a face photo online?

Regarding the above sellers selling facial photos taken by people when they check in at work or enter or exit the gate, a lawyer said to the client of Zhongxin Jingwei that it is unclear how the seller obtained these facial data. It may be bought or it may be Obtained by an intrusion monitoring or time and attendance system. In any case, it is illegal to obtain a citizen's face picture and sell it for profit without authorization.

And how do you get photos of other people ’s faces from crawling on the Internet, or from social platforms such as circle of friends and Weibo? Is it against the rules?

Seller B did not explain how the photos were collected.

Ming Cheng (pseudonym), an engineer who performs image recognition on a head e-commerce platform, is usually exposed to a large amount of face data. He told the reporter that the crawling technology can capture publicly available face photo data from the Internet. Now some foreign laboratories have published a lot of face data and can download it online. Others, such as shops selling masks on online shopping platforms, may take pictures of models for display. These photos can also be captured. As for direct Obtaining photos from the circle of friends and Weibo, as far as I know, it is currently impossible to achieve. These sellers are most likely to manually collect them one by one, circulating in the circle, constantly enriching the atlas, or buying directly from other places. "Mingcheng said.

The above lawyer stated that the images uploaded by others to social platforms are just that these rights holders are exercising their right of portraiture. If they are not explicitly authorized to use them, any person using them for commercial purposes will definitely infringe others' right to portraiture. .

Hu Gang said that, in theory, all data fetching from the Internet should have the permission of the right holder, and if it is used for commercialization, it must pay a certain compensation. "For example, in a specific system such as the circle of friends, other people only have the right to see the portrait, not the right to use or sell it. If the unauthorized use of the portrait is used for other purposes, it is an infringement." Hu Gang said.

Ding Xiaodong, an associate professor at the School of Law of Renmin University of China, said about such problems, "I think there is no problem in crawling public pictures, such as pictures of stars, but this behavior also needs to be determined according to the source of the picture and the scene of the picture If crawling semi-public images such as Weibo and friend albums, there is a certain risk due to the existence of biometric information, and crawling will require certain restrictions. "

How to protect your "face"?

At present, face recognition technology has been widely used in mobile payment, office travel, smart security, education and retail industries, and is gradually accepted and used by people. However, because face data is unique as biological information, if it is not standardized, it may lead to serious consequences. In 2019, both the face-changing app "ZAO" and the "Face Recognition Case 1" that occurred in Hangzhou have caused heated discussions.

Hu Gang said that face information is tied to identity verification. If face pictures are used illegally, individual citizens, businesses and even national security may be damaged.

It is particularly worth noting that, under the special background of masks worn by the entire population, face recognition technology with masks has been developed and widely used. Companies such as Baidu and Xiaomi have applied face recognition technology to office parks.

This means that wearing a mask in front of the machine can no longer effectively block facial information, and leakage of face data while wearing a mask will also cause great security risks.

The seller A told the reporter that the face pictures wearing masks were mostly bought for accuracy of training algorithms. "Doing an algorithm model for face recognition with a mask definitely requires massive training of face information with a mask." Seller A said. The aforementioned lawyers said that in addition to machine learning training, these photos containing face information may also be used to apply for credit loans and even register companies.

Hu Gang suggested that citizens should be careful to publicize their high-definition photos on online platforms, and that various acts of using face information, such as the use of photos of citizens holding ID cards, should be included in the scope of legal supervision. Hu Gang suggested that foreign mechanisms can be used to establish a full-time agency for personal information and privacy protection, to undertake related rights management and protection functions, not only authorize others to use it rationally, but also rely on public interest class actions to investigate punitive civil compensation for illegal users. .

"If a citizen finds that his face information has been fraudulently used, he can lodge a complaint with the Consumers Association, Industrial Credit, and Internet Credit and other departments. If necessary, he can also bring a lawsuit to the court." Hu Gang said.

Xue Jun, a professor at Peking University School of Law, believes that it is necessary to set a threshold for face recognition. "Face information is accompanied by a person's lifetime, and the risk of leakage is particularly great. Therefore, for the most stringent protection, it must first be explicitly stated by the user. Consent can be collected. I personally think that sometimes it is not enough to obtain personal consent. National authorization is required to collect sensitive biometric information. "(Zhongxin Jingwei APP)

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