What Else Happens When Your Face is Your Passport?

Did we pass a privacy milestone without realizing it? Computer science professor Ken Perlin writes on his blog:Recently I was traveling internationally. I have the Global Traveller option, so I could just to a machine, put in my passport, put my face in front of a camera, and get a piece of paper to hand to the immigration officer. But I was really tired from the flight. So I forgot to put my passport into the slot - I just posed for the camera. And it worked anyway. The paper came out saying that I was me, I handed it to the immigration officer, and I was done. It seems that just my photo was enough to identify me. Apparently sticking your passport into the slot is essentially theater. Your government can already tell who you are just from analyzing a photo of you, and they will let you into the country on that basis. Where does this lead? In a follow-up blog post, Perlin offers one example, imagining a professor looking at a new class and already knowing "everyone's name, what their interests were, the date of their birth, and whether they played a musical instrument. "In other words, I would be able to know far too much about them."This is, in my opinion, not a good thing. And yet it might be the future we are about to go into headlong. I think we should be giving this a lot of thought. We take for granted now that when people look at us, they don't immediately know everything about us. I'm not sure that particular right to privacy is something we should be willing to give up. Thanks to Slashdot reader saccade.com for sharing the story

Read more of this story at Slashdot.