原作者：
来源Facial recognition study raises new fears over ID theft | Mail Online
译者xuhong713
How a stranger can now be identified in just THREE SECONDS by facial recognition… along with their social security number
面部识别技术仅需3秒钟就能识别出一个人……以及他的身份证号码
One in three people can be identified on Facebook using just their photograph, a study has found.
研究表明，仅仅使用照片，就能在Facebook上鉴别出三分之一的人的身份。
Researchers took a picture of 93 volunteers and used this to track them down on the social networking site using publicly available software – usually within three seconds. Armed with the profile they were then able to predict the first five digits of their social security number 27 per cent of the time.
研究者采集了93个志愿者的照片，并利用可以公开得到的软件，成功使用这些照片在社交网络中找到了他们——通常只需要3秒钟。利用这些社交网络用户的个人资料，研究者有27%的可能性成功推测出他们的社会安全号码的前5位。
The study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh used the Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition, or PittPatt, facial recognition software which has just been bought by Google. They took pictures of the 93 students and compared them with 261,262 publicly available photos downloaded from Facebook profiles.
这些来自匹兹堡卡耐基梅隆大学的研究者使用的软件是“匹兹堡模式识别（ Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition）”，或者叫PittPatt，这是一款才被Google收购的面部识别软件。他们采集了93个学生的照片，并将其与261262个在网络上公开的照片进行比对。这些照片都是从Facebook的资料中下载的。
In under three seconds their system turned up 10 possible matches. The correct one was in the top three more than 30 per cent of the time.
在三秒钟的时间内系统就找出了10个可能的匹配项。超过30%的时间里正确的匹配都出现在前三位中。
Professor Alessandro Acquisti, the lead researcher, said that technology had now evolved so that there was a ‘democratisation of surveillance’.
研究的带头人Alessandro Acquisti教授表示，如今技术已经进化到一定程度以至于已经产生了“民主化监控”的概念。
The researchers said that Facebook, which has 750 million members worldwide, is becoming the world’s default identification service. In the past the only publicly available pictures have been school photographs or mugshots of criminals which have been tricky to get hold of. Now ID thieves could potentially find out everything they need to know just by surfing the web and looking at photos.
研究者表示，在全球拥有7.5亿用户的Facebook，正在成为世界默认的身份识别服务提供者。在过去，在公共范围内可见的照片仅有学校照片，或者是被蓄意获取的犯人脸部照片。而现在，ID盗贼们有可能仅仅通过搜索网络和观察照片就获取到他们想知道的一切信息。
Professor Acquisti said the study ‘suggests that the identity of about one-third of subjects walking by the campus building may be inferred in a few seconds combining social-network data, cloud computing and an inexpensive web cam.’ With just four attempts he was also able to identify the first five digits of the test subjects’ social security numbers, potentially a goldmine for ID thieves.
Acquisti教授表示，这项研究“揭示了约有三分之一的在校园建筑里游走的各个面孔，会在几秒钟之内，通过社交网络上的数据，云计算以及廉价的网络摄像机被识别出来”。仅仅经过了4次尝试，他就成功鉴别出实验对象的社保号码前五号。这对于ID小偷来讲可是一个金矿。
‘The chain of inferences comes from one single piece of anonymous information – somebody’s face,’ he said.
“这一系列推测链仅仅发端于对一个陌生人的匆匆一瞥”，教授说。
Paul Ohm, a law professor at University of Colorado Law School, who has read the paper, said the research showed how easy it was to ‘re-identify’ people. ‘This paper really establishes that re-identification is much easier than experts think it’s going to be,’ he told the Wall St Journal.
Paul Ohm是科罗拉多大学法学院的法律教授，他看了这篇论文之后表示，这项研究揭示了去“再识别”一个人是多么的容易。“这篇论文真实地展示了再识别技术比专家们想象的容易实现得多。”他对华尔街日报如是说。
The advent of facial recognition software has sparked an arms race between Google and Facebook.
面部识别软件的出现，点燃了Google和Facebook之间的“军备竞赛”。
In June Google launched Google+, its social networking website which it plans to integrate with PittPatt. Facebook has already rolled out its version which lets people identify pictures of friends.
在六月份，Google的Google+项目上线，这是一个计划整合PittPatt的社交网络。而Facebook已经发布了通过照片就能识别朋友身份的新版本。
According to the National Institutes of Standards and Technology the proportion of photographs which were wrongly identified by such programmes has declined from 79% in 1993 to just 0.29% last year.
根据美国国家标准及技术研究所的数据，面部识别程序通过照片识别人脸的错误率已经从1993年的79%降到了去年的0.29%。
Earlier this year a the D: All Things Digital Conference Google chairman Eric Schmidt told of his concerns about Facebook dominance of social networking.
在今年初的All Things Digital大会上，Google主席Eric Schmidt表达了对于Facebook在社交领域的统治地位的担忧。
Facebook is ‘the first generally available way of disambiguating identity,’ he said.
Facebook 是“第一个真正意义上能够消除身份二义性的服务”，他说。
‘Historically, on the Internet such a fundamental service wouldn’t be owned by a single company. I think the industry would benefit from an alternative to that.’
“历史上，在因特网上具有如此关键性意义的服务都不会被一个公司所垄断。我想，如果给这项服务提供更多的选择，那么整个业界都会从中受益。”
A Facebook spokesman told the Wall St Journal that users do not have to upload a photo to their profile if they do not want to.
Facebook的发言人告诉华尔街日报，如果用户不想上传照片，那么他们完全可以那么做。
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