Facebook’s facial recognition work is attracting attention… and they apparently have unnamed spokesmen and a company policy to not identify their reps?

From this NYTimes story:

Through a spokesman, Facebook rejected the regulator’s claim, saying the tagging feature, which gives the person in the photograph the final right to accept, reject or remove a tag, conforms with the European privacy law.

“We will consider the points the Hamburg Data Protection Authority have made about the photo tag suggest feature but firmly reject any claim that we are not meeting our obligations under European Union data protection law,” said a Facebook spokesman in Berlin, who declined to be identified, citing Facebook’s company policy on not identifying its representatives.

It’s just a matter of time before facial recognition software for social networking sites will attract regulation in the U.S., not just Europe.

Meantime, google is doing some interesting stuff with counting heads:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/07/22/google-acquires-facial-recognition-technology-company/