Snapchat is an extremely popular application, which has had great success especially among young people in recent years.
But what makes Snapchat so effective?
The app is mainly based on the possibility of sending your photos to friends, modifying them with funny filters ("Face Mask", "Sunglassess", "Flower crown" etc.) and in this there is certainly nothing proccupant or mysterious.
However, if we analyze how the application works, we realize that by sending all these images of ours through the app, we are giving great trust to this software, which could instead keep all these images without our knowledge.
But why should they do it, what would be the advantage?
In 2016 the rapper B.o.B, through his Twitter account, released the following statement:
"when you realize all the snap chat filters are really building a facial recognition database"
In practice, in the rapper's words, all the images we send through Snapchat would then be conveyed into a single large database, presumably used for facial recognition software.
At this point the question is: "who is using Snapchat to build a facial recognition database?".
According to the most recurrent conspiracy theories, the United States government is using social media to create this facial recognition database, for purposes related to security and control.
While many may be skeptical, something like this is apparently not only realistic but already in existence and used for several years. In fact, the FBI has officially declared that it is working on a program called "The Next Generation Identification System". This system has been active since 2011 and has integrated and improved the previous "Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS)", already operational since 1999. The function of these programs is to use the biometric fingerprint, photos, fingerprints, fingerprint of the iris, historical data, etc., to verify the subjects involved by law enforcement.
But what does Snapchat have to do with all this?
Apparently the FBI and the Government have acted without this help, however it is easy to imagine that with the support of social media the long work necessary to find the photos of millions of people would certainly be easier and faster.
It is correct in any case to note that according to the terms of use of Snapchat, all the images sent are deleted after being viewed by the recipient, consequently Snapchat claims not to keep user photos and not to provide these data to any government agency .
“Values are like fingerprints. Nobody's are the same, but you leave 'em all over everything you do”
-Elvis Presley
Resources related to Snapchat is building a government facial recognition database
- Medium
- THRILLIST
- wattpad
- WIKIPEDIA
Article image by TeroVesalainen
Article image 2 by Gerd Altmann
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