In this installment of Pandia’s foresight study we take a look at the civil rights implications of advanced image search.

Pandia is proud to publish a new article from the 2015 edition of the Pandia Post newsletter, a file we have received, by  freak accident through a very rare digital wormhole. In this interview Pandia discusses the complexity of online image and video search with Google’s chief engineer, May Corr.

California, January 2015

Pandia: The new version of Google Image Search has caused a lot of controversy. The New York Times calls it a legal time bomb, while German Stern has gone as far as calling it the wet dream of a Nazi dictator. What is it that makes it so controversial?

MC: First of all, let me say that we do not appreciate the tone of the Stern article, which seems to indicate that we are deliberately developing a tool to be used by dictators world wide. I would argue that Google has contributed significantly  to the development of democracy merely by giving people access to all the information they want. The fact that the Chinese authorities now have given up censoring the Internet seems to confirm this, as is the new leader’s promise of true democracy.

Pandia: To summarize this for our readers:

Google Image Search has for a long time been able to search images from a wide number of sources: web pages, social photo and video sharing sites like flickr, YouTube and pixies, and Google Maps satellite photos. There is nothing new in this. However, previously Google has identified the relevant keywords associated with these images and videos by use of the surrounding text, HTML tags and closed captioning in videos: You enter a text search and get text based search results back.

Now you may send Google Image Search a picture of a person, Google will analyse this picture and give the person a unique identification number based on facial proportions, skin color etc. It can then use this information to search for other images of the same person. This technology is based on patents used in software developed for law enforcement and forensics. Given the fact that high definition video is now commonplace, even a web cam shot of a public park may be used to identify individual persons.

Ms. Corr, you must see why some people feel concern about the possibilities the new service give for surveillance, or — even — stalking?

MC: No, not directly, no. You may, of course use this technology to identify older pictures of the same person, and if that picture shows this person in a compromising situation, I would guess that that might cause some embarrassment. But we cannot be held responsible for what people upload to the Net, nor for their teenage adventures. Look at this from the other side: This technology can also be used to find missing relatives or old friends.

Pandia: Most modern cameras includes a GPS, automatically tagging pictures with the latitude and the longitude of the place where the picture is taken or the video is filmed. The same applies to permanent web cams. Many stores and companies publish their own web-cam feeds online, adding meta-tags and code that tells you exactly where and when the feed is from.

Norway is, as you know, a very Internet intensive country, and we have tested the service.

We were actually able to follow one of our editors on a walk all over Oslo, from web cam to web cam and using tourist photos instantly and wirelessly uploaded to Picasa, flickr, YouTube and pixies, not only in real time, but also by reconstructing previous strolls.

By using advanced search, we could also combine this series of pictures with satellite images from Google Maps. In one of the satellite images we could actually see our editor talking to a beggar on Karl Johan street. Doesn’t this scare you?

MC: No, why should it? There is nothing wrong in talking to beggars or going shopping. And walking in a public areas has never been personal or secret. If you are out there, you will be seen.

Again, I feel that people have a tendency to focus on the negative aspects of this instead of the positive. We have already seen several instances where people have managed to stop robberies and assaults, just by forwarding relevant photos and feeds to the police. Last week the life of a Baltimore woman was saved by a man who found her on a web feed, lying still near a pond in a park. He immediately called an ambulance, and was able to give them the exact location of where she was!

Pandia: The new Google image search has led to the development of a new kind of search engine spamming. Black hat webmasters will now include pictures of old and new movie stars and models on their sites to attract visitors searching for pictures of them. Do you think this is a problem?

MC: It is not a big problem, no. If someone makes a web page with information on James Dean and includes a picture of him, that’s all right with us, as its presents relevant information. If someone includes a picture of Mr. Dean on a site selling Viagra, Toxic Blues or X-bombs, it will not rank well for image searches for Dean. We will always take off-image factors into consideration when ranking images taken from web pages.

Pandia: And what if the face of Mr. Dean is transposed digitally onto the body of another person, for instance in a commercial or a pornographic movie?

MC: Well, in some cases a commercial like that will constitute a relevant hit. As for the adult bit, we have ways of calculating the amount of skin area in any picture or frame, and are able to identify most unsuitable files that way.

Pandia: And what will the future bring for image search?

MC: Now, that is a well kept secret. However, you should take a look at Google Animation in Google labs. If you upload any still picture, our service will analyze its content and develop an animated video featuring the persons and objects depicted. You may even edit it yourself, making the “actors” do anything you want them to do! You may then upload the video to YouTube, sharing it with your friends.

Pandia: You really love the court room, don’t you?

[Please note that this is a future scenario and a piece of science fiction. The companies mentioned cannot be held responsible or the words we put in their mouths.]

See also the other articles in this series:
The search engine scene in 2015
Search 2015: When media equals the Internet

For more information on current image search technologies, see the article Are there search engines for image, sound or movie content?