Face recognition on your cameraphone?

This is by way of World Changing, Jamais Cascio quotes from <ahref=”http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18825314.300&feedId=online-news_rss20″ target=”_blank”> an article in New Scientist Technology:
The concept… is based on a central server that registers details sent by the phone when the photo is taken. These include the nearest cellphone mast, the strength of the call signal and the time the photo was taken. […]

…in tests Davis and his team found that by combining [facial recognition software] with context information the system could correctly identify people 60 per cent of the time. The context information can also be combined with image-recognition software to identify places within photos.

60% recognition? Not useful, yet — but that’s why it’s still in the labs and not on your phone. This is just the sort of thing that will get much better, much faster than some might expect. Get ready.

I am not sure that I am particularly happy about this technological development. While I think that autotagging, particularly autogeotagging is pretty damn cool, the idea that some cellphone camera is going to know it just took a picture of me at street protest is pretty creapy. I know that we already live in a surveilance state and here in New York, the police photograph and video people from the skies and streets… but the idea that every cameraphone out there becomes part of this network that the government could tap into is downright scary.