On Privacy and Polar Rose
In the wake of the coverage of our upcoming launch, there’s been a natural discussion about what effect Polar Rose will have on privacy. We’re conscious of this issue and have been so from the very start; when founding the company, when first introducing the idea to Nordic Venture Partners (our investors), and with colleagues before and after they were hired.
It should come as little surprise that we believe that Polar Rose adds tremendous value to the photo web. We think we’re as harmful to the photo web, as Altavista, Yahoo!, and Google have been to the text web. By sorting the text web, these search engines exposed the wonderful resource of public documents that web had already become. The side-effect was that information which was not meant for public consumption, but which was kept private by obscurity, was suddenly exposed and searchable.
So is the photo web today. Hundreds of millions of photos that are screaming to be sorted, viewed, and searched are not being so because no one took the time – or had a facility like Flickr or other photo-sharing sites – to add descriptions, names, or tags. We want to sort this photo web to make each photo more valuable to the viewer, but also to the person who shot it. Tell the story, make it discoverable.
We’ll end up finding photos that the published never really thought of as being public. The trick, however, is not to turn off the technology, just like Altavista or any of the subsequent search engines weren’t shut down or otherwise censored. The challenge is to facilitate a way to make sure that photos that shouldn’t be in our database, aren’t. This can be by restricting access or by telling us not to pick them up.
- We don’t index private photos; photos behind a firewall, login, or on a user’s desktop computer. (We’ll do some partnerships where private photos will be indexed, but thus only for the individual user’s viewing)
- We honor robots.txt and subsequent requests by a site owner to remove photos from our database.
- We’ll never engage Polar Rose in the application of the technology in security or surveillance. It’s explicitly stated in the contracts we enter with partners.
While we believe we have a good grip of the privacy issues at hand, more are going to pop up. I and others from within the company will continue to post on this subject here and anywhere else the discussion happens – by email, phone or on other blogs. Privacy will always, always stay top-of-mind.
Tags: polarrose, privacy, robots.txt
December 21st, 2006 at 02:03
Hey, I’m a brazilian man and a loved this!! =D I’m starting now with blogs and unhappyly i don’t had much visits, but exactly thus i will post in there about Polar Rose! =D I’ll be the first brazilian use this feature! =D Peace for you.
December 21st, 2006 at 02:15
Wow, this technology is too good to be true! I’ll keep my fingers crossed, can’t wait to try out!
December 21st, 2006 at 02:16
P.S. Just saw you on CNN! =o]
December 21st, 2006 at 03:10
I hope there will be protections such as:
1) the ability of a person to block tagging of images of themselves
2) the ability to place a comment in the image files to specify that they shouldn’t be tagged or searched
3) the ability to prevent false tagging for the purpose of libel, etc.
December 21st, 2006 at 04:46
Great ideas,,
December 22nd, 2006 at 13:07
great idea! great program!
However, are you sure that your software cannot, under no circumstances, be abused by government agencies, stalkers, malvolent users of the web?
I would deeply appreciate if you had bulit security features which will prevent any abuse.
December 22nd, 2006 at 22:56
I hope that there will not be protections such as these listed above by Winston, as any protections like these will be abused. robots.txt is exactly what should be (and is already) respected by the software. Noone should be able to block images of themselves unless they own the image (which goes back to robots.txt). As far as false tags go I don’t see how any indexer can tell what a “false” tag is other than by consensus. People should treat images with the same respect as any other data on the web. If you don’t protect it, google will publish it. It should not be your (or google’s) responsibility to protect their data.
December 23rd, 2006 at 02:40
In response to Winston’s comment:
> 1) the ability of a person to block tagging of images of themselves
As Jim B points out in his comment, and such protections would in themselves be abused. We would never be able to practically be able to do this as this would open up for you to for example submit a block to all pictures of George Bush or Jay Leno just because you don’t like any of them.
> 2) the ability to place a comment in the image files to specify that they
> shouldn’t be tagged or searched
We’re working on seeing how this could practically be done, but the JPEG standard looks like a good bet.
On a much less serious node, one commentator on Slashdot suggested “Just have the contents of a robots.txt file tattooed on your forehead.” ;-)
> 3) the ability to prevent false tagging for the purpose of libel, etc.
We can’t censor what our users tag. We can, however, harness the collective intelligence to let the seemingly best choice ‘float’ to the top.
We will also let it be transparent who has tagged a person what.
Finally, I couldn’t agree more with Jim B’s comment above that “People should treat images with the same respect as any other data on the web”.
December 23rd, 2006 at 20:00
I am VERY suspicious of this application,
Remember those pictures at the friend took at that party?Too wasted?
I bet your boss will show them to you cause he just searched your
name and you are fired.
i will be watching this one VERY closely,
It’s inevitable that something like this would come out but who the hell are these guys??
December 23rd, 2006 at 22:08
I’m of course fascinated by the technology you are developing, and have already signed up for the beta (hint: I use Firefox! I’m an IT pro! I write really good bug reports!). I’ve been expecting facial recoginition techniques to percolate upward into the consumer/user realm for years now. Polar Rose isn’t even the first on-line application of such technology, though it seems to be by far the most ambitious.
In regards to privacy, as nikolajn posted there’s a great deal of data (text, photos, programs, legal documents, etc) on the Internet that is thought of as private but isn’t actually protected in anyway except by obscurity (“Gee, no one will think to look in this directory on my website!”). Privacy is a human invention and can only exist as long as people obey social conventions for privacy, though of course privacy laws help as well (mostly to protect us from our own governments).
I’d like to suggest a few additional controls that will not only assure greater privacy for people but protect your company from lawsuits. And a lawsuit is GOING to happen, it’s guaranteed. So prepare for it now…
1) Have a clear and easy-to-follow method for a person to request that photo data be removed. You’ll need a process to verify the authentiicity of the request, propogate the data removal to any downstream/customer systems, etc.
2) robots.txt is not enough, as someone said individual tags will need to be allowed so photos can be set to not be indexed, password protected, etc. By Tags I mean HTML tags, controls that the authors will need to use not user-inputted data.
3) The users will need to have a quick way to report/fix wrong or bad data.
4) All the indexed photo data in your databases must be encrypted. While your company promises to never make deals with third-parties for security or surveillance, what happens if a government agency takes your data by force? Or an employee steals data and sells it to government agencies, or worse an organized crime group?
5) You’ll need to do due-dilligence for those companies you license any software or data to, to make sure they are not in turn abusing it or distributing it. This must be aggressively enforced or you business could be at risk.
Thanks for the opportunity to comment!
December 25th, 2006 at 18:59
Hi guys, are you afraid of the ordinary text search engines too, like Google? Are you sure that Google cannot, under no circumstances, be abused by government agencies, stalkers, malvolent users of the web, or a boss who wants to fire you? The Polar Rose idea just seems to be an old search engine idea in a new context (and I like it!). It would be fun/interesting to give the Polar Rose a chance and if most people then don’t like it, the internet democracy (aka the mob) will take care of it in its usual way… :)
December 26th, 2006 at 10:26
good blog is dead blog:-)...
...
December 27th, 2006 at 01:16
Jedi Mercer,
Thanks for the comments which are all appreciated. We’re looking into the simplest way of adding HTML tags as ‘delimiters’ and will be coming up with a couple of different options for doing this (microformat rel-nofollow style, in the IMG tag, and in the HTML header). We’ll probably support all three options to start with until a standard for this can be pushed (again, most likely within the Microformats group) or one emerges by popular use.
/n
December 29th, 2006 at 22:03
It would seem then, that only those wearing veils would enjoy some modest privacy. I guess then we will all revert to the medival ages. Under disguise, masked or armored. A perpetual Halloween of sorts.
Rock on dudes! What ever will be will be.
December 30th, 2006 at 10:26
Text is different than images. You can change text, you can’t change your face. Text connected to a human can be altered, changed, and forgotten, but a face cannot. The two are not the same. Don’t spread the “google-is-doing-the-same-thing” that is simplistic and lacking logic. But like the person before said… the internet mob will ultimately decide this technology’s fate. They always do.
December 30th, 2006 at 21:30
Great Technology, i don’t agree with not allowing your technology to be used in security, or surveillance.. i think we can significantly increase the effectiveness or our national security(US & allies) with this tool, not to mention border control.
Make it open source please under GPL, and don’t limit people or organization use :).
January 8th, 2007 at 08:44
[...] The company’s blog has some interesting things to say on their software and privacy: On Privacy and Polar Rose [...]
January 16th, 2007 at 14:47
I think that allowing the user the chose whether his/her image can be tagged is a very good idea. I think it would be a better idea if the user would be able to submit a bunch of his/her photos, tag them themselves and THEN instruct Polar Rose NOT to reveal any information about them to others (even if they are appearing on others’ photos, well, maybe unless they tagged that person themselves). That way, you can protect yourself better.
I do agree that posted photos are public domain, but that doesn’t we should just hand information about people to everyone.
February 1st, 2007 at 22:39
Nice Post.
That was well said. Always appreciate your indepth views. Keep up the great work!
John
March 17th, 2007 at 11:00
Hello! I just want to say, this blog is the best blog! So many useful info. Thank you.
April 21st, 2007 at 03:54
Hey,
I love what you’e doing!
Don’t ever change and best of luck.
Raymon W.
April 26th, 2007 at 20:44
I’m not quite understanding what all
this is supposed to be about?
Must be me or something…
May 2nd, 2007 at 21:29
Hey,
Great stuff here!
I’ll definitely bookmark this place and come back soon.
Robby
May 2nd, 2007 at 23:01
How green is the grass on the other side of the fence?
Not much. Don’t believe it I tell you.
Jerry
May 23rd, 2007 at 16:44
Well, what those restrictions to access to somebody’s pictures online, whis you guys are trying to give people is like to trow a bone.So if you are such geniuses, please, make sure that anyone in the world could limit access ( or could make pictures unavaliable at all) in some simple way. You people just don’t realize what you put yourself through, ‘cause there are millions and millions of people who don’t want you to decide for them. I want to be a human happy and free+ I LOVE my privacy.So my sugession: THNK TWICE
May 26th, 2007 at 21:15
so is this not available to use yet? i saw an article about it in pc magazine and as far as i could tell it was already available. yet when i go to the polar rose website, there is no link to download the program or whatever it is i need to use it. this is very frustrating since i had high hopes for this program and was looking forward to using it. but since i cant find a download link or anything, i guess im out of luck. so you guys at polarrose.com, be a little more clear on how to get this program and how to use it.
June 5th, 2007 at 16:26
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June 14th, 2007 at 12:42
This one makes sence “One’s first step in wisdom is to kuesstion everything – and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.”
got no site
June 15th, 2007 at 20:58
[...] On Privacy and Polar Rose – Polar Rose Blog : On Privacy and Polar Rose It should come as little surprise that we believe that Polar Rose adds tremendous value to the photo web. We think we’re as harmful to the photo web, as Altavista, Yahoo!, and Google have been to the text web. By sorting the text web, these search engines exposed the wonderful resource of public documents that web had already become. The side-effect was that information which was not meant for public consumption, but which was kept private by obscurity, was suddenly exposed and searchable. [...]
June 18th, 2007 at 11:32
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August 2nd, 2007 at 13:39
Isebar G, do you think the government doesn’t already have tools like Polar Rose – seriously?
I think it will be great, and I can’t wait to start the beta :)
September 22nd, 2007 at 04:49
Quick problems I see with this:
1. People taking random pictures sight-unseen by others.
Example:
I am just some random guy, walking the streets of New York City. Or looking down from a balcony. Or whatever.
I’m taking pictures, perhaps stock pictures for whatever purpose, to show “a crowded NYC street”.
Unfortunately, unable to see me seeing them, I’ve hit the probability jackpot, and have caught the following, identifiable through Polar Rose after I innocently post my photo to the web:
1. Someone in a Witness Protection program.
2. Someone currently under cover, perhaps a cop or intelligence operative.
3. A battered woman, on the run from an abusive husband/boyfriend/whatever.
How can you promise me that any one of those 3 people would not end up dead or otherwise screwed up within a very short time of that photo hitting the web?
If you can’t, isn’t Polar Rose just a bit much of a risk to be taking?