|The Minority Report Made Real: Ads Are All Around You|
Say goodbye to anonymity. From 60 minutes last night Even if your picture isn't on the Internet, computerized facial recognition makes it virtually impossible to keep your "faceprint" private.
Over the last 10 years, the ability of computers to identify faces has gotten 100 times better, a million times faster, and exponentially cheaper.
Yet facial recognition technology is still a work in progress. While investigators in the Boston marathon bombing had multiple images of both suspects, the technology did not come up with a match. They were not identified by their faces, but by their fingerprints! Authorities won't say what went wrong. One possibility is that government data banks - through which the photos would've been searched - are not big enough.
As we discovered, the FBI is working on expanding its database. Businesses are tapping facial recognition to sell us stuff and computer scientists are upgrading the technology.
I already checked and FacePrint.com (great name) is registered to a Geek who is not in the FacePrint business. FacePrints.com is parked at DirectNic and is bound to be very valuable.
Leslie Stahl reports.