Hello and welcome to a new video
Today is about PimEyes
PimEyes is a controversial software, and I am maybe going to make myself unpopular
But before hating, please watch the whole video to understand, why I have this opinion
So let's begin: What is PimEyes?
It is a website similar to Google Image Reverse Search
You upload an image and you find the place where not only the picture, but the person can be found
Unlike Google Image, PimEyes will find also similar images from that person. Not only the exact same ones.
That is done by using biometric data like eye position etc
That is basically what AI face recognition does as well
And of course with your passport as well
Of course, there's a lot of criticism. There is a reason, why Google doesn't do that.
Google only offers searching for the same image in all sizes
But not pictures of the same person
and similar images, but not on biometric information
Well, this sounds like ClearView AI for everyone
ClearView AI is a database for police based on face recognition
This created a huge uproar
because images could be found with surveillance cameras and used to identify the person on social media
This is rather unsettling
But of course we ourselves are to blame as we provide our image/video only like I do right now
and many of you probably do have profile pictures on instagram/...
But right now in the face of black lifes matter, police has lost a lot of trust around the globe
and Google, Amazon, etc have stopped offering them their services for face recognition
The big companies wanted to stay out of that or at least not take sides with the police
And with PimEyes, of course, the police can track down people again
Also, this website can be used by anyone - stalkers for example
And you could upload images of your wife and find out.. I quote:
On a test run on pimeyes I found 61 nude photos of my wife that were published unknowingly
That is pretty unpleasant and not what you would expect
and you probably wouldn't want to find that. I understand the antipathy here
But! Those nude photos are already online. PimEyes does not upload or host them
PimEyes just finds them by using an image of that woman
It is a search engine for images or faces
Others said, it could be used as surveillance tool for the country
That is basically, what can be said about the police
In combination with CCTV this can get really bad, sure
And then, there is some uproar about PimEyes having a mailbox in Delaware
So basically, it is a letterbox company
In Delaware you have to pay  way less taxes than anywhere else in many cases
That is why there are a lot of letterbox companies - as well as Apple, Google, VW, Daimler etc
Now, let's talk about, why I think PimEyes is not the actual problem here
And maybe it is not as bad as everyone says
Many of you might think now: Wait what - how dare you??
Let me explain
Let's assume I find nude photos of me/my wife/whoever on PimEyes
At first, this will be a shock
but those images are already on the internet
and if I find them, I won't be using any nude photo, since I don't know about them
But I can take an image of my face
find them, and let them get taken down
That is the best advantage possible. I can delete them
We do have the right - given by the GDPR
Furthermore, you can create alerts on PimEyes
meaning, you will get notified if there are new images of you found on the internet
It is not for free, thou
But if I get notified about new nude photos of me on the internet - that's absolutely worth it (assuming, there are nude photos of you)
And thanks to the notification, I'll probably be quite fast
That means, anyone could possibly find such images with PimEyes
But I get ahold of a powerful tool to remove such content
and I personally prefer to be in control of content about me rather than hoping that noone will find it
As for the police/surveillance by the country
We already see, that it is possible. Noone stops the police/the NSA/... from creating their own software
And we can assume, such software has already been developed
and there is no need for them to use PimEyes or similar tools
and we saw how much funding there is if it is really wanted/needed
By using a software that is available for everyone, I can see, what can be found about me
that is one reason, why I think, there is not so much wrong with PimEyes
But there are aspects, where PimEyes is absolutely wrong
Or maybe they let us as a society see, that there is something wrong with our currect society?
The right to be deleted can sometimes not be enforced.
Because the internet is not limited by laws of eg Germany
It is global
That's why it is the internet, not the intranet.
That means, there are servers and websites from all over the world
That can be problem, if you try enforcing laws. Laws are local for websites.
Let's say, I try to delete something from a porn German website
and there is a deep fake with my face on it
I can get it deleted instantly, thanks to the GDPR
but if that website is located in Panama or some other restrictionless country
somewhere, where no European laws came into force,
I got a huge problem
And here, we see, that the internet can help out criminals quite a bit
Problem is: The internet is global
and most of the time, you cannot enforce your law on websites somewhere else
So, it is not PimEyes, it is a conceptual problem with the internet
Someone else can - without us knowing - upload images and we do not always have the possibilities to delte them
To change that, you would have to change the way the internet works
Although, of course, many websites still delete such content, even if they are not within the European Union
The last thing is: You can upload photos of anyone on PimEyes.
That is a huge problem
Anyone can search for me, find every photo of me
That is a huge no-go
That is a festival for stalkers
I could use photos from the bus, tram, ...
Find out what s/he is named, what s/he does, ...
Maybe even find some leaks from hacks
That is huge problem
Usually you cannot find out who someone is by just photographing him/her on the subway
Because Google Reverse Image Search will not find the photo you just took
and it's good, that Google won't be able to find such images
But PimEyes can find them
If we go further, there might be already several companies offering such services in secret
or any authority
PimEyes tries to prevent it as good as possible:
You cannot just go ahead and upload anyones picture
First, you have to check, that you'll only be uploading images of yourself
That will do exactly nothing
The second thing they do is: Depending on your browser, you can only upload webcam images
But you can just switch the browser and it is possible to use files
using noscript, I managed to do so
and the second thing: You can just hold your smartphone with the image in front of that webcam
The third thing they do is, they hide links behind a paywall
So, first I have to pay about 17$ and then I get to see the source of the image
So, they just show the website, but the link is hidden
So, I actually don't know where it is uploaded to
They want to prevent random people from uploading your photo by that
Because stalkers hopefully are not that willingly paying for that service
But you can easily get around that mechanism
By downloading the images and using Google Reverse Image Search
And you get the links
I thought about some aspects on how to do it better
One method would be to use the passport
so, they would have to only accept your image if you can prove your identity with the E-Passport function
But I honestly would not share my passport with any website
So that is no solution
Although it would be a possibility
Another idea I came up with was using a social media profile
by using the profile image from there
But just creating a fake social media profile and using someone elses image would break the security mechanism
Sure, it is not as easy as just uploading a file
But it would not solve the problem
If you got any ideas - write down in the comments below
Let me know your opinion on PimEyes
and let me know what you think about the topic of online tracking
and anonymity in public spaces
Thanks for watching, bye
