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Saw this on Shlok’s site:

Viewdle – Photo and Video Face Tagging from Viewdle on Vimeo.

This kind of app is a required step for making augmented reality devices part of the social media ecology. Therefore, this tech will become a standard for all mobile devices – merchants and advertisers want us as an army of data collectors on each other.

OTOH, automatic face-recognition and social media aggregation raises serious concerns about the potential dangers of living under a panopticon state if an app is aggregating and bundling all your online data in real time, while giving out your GPS and home address. A godsend to stalkers, oppo researchers, con men, disgruntled spouses or employees, autocratic governments and other creepy malefactors. Expect businesses, which are already attempting to illegally pry and spy into all areas of employee’s lives, to make surreptitious use of apps of this nature

Puts the protests to revolution in Egypt and Tunisia in perspective, doesn’t it?

If the FCC wanted to do something useful and promoting of liberty, they might consider regs to let individuals exercise greater control the use third parties would have to their collective online IDs – then you could be “out there” or not or to the degree you liked. Some people, do want to be “out there” professional or social reasons. While you cannot control pictures of yourself in a public space, I’m not sure the Supreme Court thought that your presence in public meant that random strangers and government officials should be able to run your credit history as you sit at a table in a restaurant or bar or take in a movie or ball game by taking your photo. A similar logic underlies state laws prohibiting wiretapping or making auditory recording individuals without their knowledge and consent (Illinois being one such state where Chicago aldermen and state legislators have acquired a healthy fear of recording devices).

Speaking of government, I have been told by an authoritative source that the USG rsearch is far advanced in this area. Probably a lot further along than is Viewdle, but perhaps not.

[ by Charles Cameron — cross-posted from Brainstormers on the Web ]

You know, we talk a lot about Facebook and Twitter as technologies for change, but how about painted fingers?

Sources: Iraq — and she was too young to vote! — Iran

[ by Charles Cameron ] Zombies! Can’t live without them! Sources: Ursula Lindsey — Steve Benen

[ by Charles Cameron — cross-posted from Brainstormers on the Web ]

One thing leads to another, and building that DoubleQuote made me want to include another picture of a man with a tank — from a somewhat but by no means entirely similar situation a couple of decades back…

which led me in turn to this:

But then, you know, this is the web, and while searching for some URLs to give you so you could look at these images full size and with the appropriate attributions, I stumbled across yet one more image for my peaceful uses tanks can be put to collection, and realized there’s more than one way to relax with a tank while you decide what to do next…

In any case: here are the sources:

Prayer – Reflection
Tienanmen Square – Tahrir Square #23
Read – Dream

[ by Charles Cameron – a Zenpundit exclusive! ]

I was browsing the web looking for court papers from the case of Rajib Karim today, and one of the links I got took me to an Islamic Awakening page — which is to say, to an English-language, pro-jihadist forum founded by Yousef al-Khattab — where I found myself facing some unexpected advertising…

Let me get this straight. The pro-jihadist website Islamic Awakening is now receiving funds from a university that wants to train future diplomats and some schools for aspiring police officers?

If so, do these educational establishments imagine they’re recruiting from the pool of wannabe jihadists who supposedly frequent the site — or from folks already in the FBI and counter-terrorism business, who may by now be the site’s only remaining readers?

Either way, I’d say it’s a pretty subtle approach — and almost as much fun to stumble across as the Bold Christian clothing ad that I found on a previous visit to Islamic Awakening… do you remember that?