Private Europeans of the new Facebook application – Le Figaro

The US company announced that “Moments”, the new application photos, would not be available in Europe as it uses facial recognition technology, a practice framed by the European Union.

For now, the Europeans will be without the new Facebook application. The social network announced Friday that “Moments”, his private photo sharing service, would not go out in Europe. The application is available from the beginning of the week in the United States. It allows you to share photos with friends privately and can recognize faces present on a photo to facilitate sending the persons concerned. This use of facial recognition technology makes cringe European regulators. “We were told that we had to establish a system to collect the agreement of users,” said Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice president in charge of European public policy. “This is not the case now, so the application will not be available until we developed one.” No publication date has been provided.

The release of “Moments” falls into a tense situation for Facebook. Earlier this week, EU Justice Ministers approved a draft Directive to better protect personal data on the Internet. It aims, among others, to facilitate the imposition of sanctions against the giants of the web that violate the new rules. Facebook must also face the sling of the Belgian Data Protection Authority, who filed a complaint against the social network Monday. According to the organization, the American company illegally track its Internet users outside of its pages.

This is not the first time that Facebook has to censor any of its products in Europe. In 2012, the social network had already been forced to remove a feature to automatically identify people in photos. If Europe decides to permanently harden the tone, Facebook could be forced to propose a completely different service outside the United States. A complex system and potentially costly as to avoid the social network. “At a time when Europe is seeking to create jobs and boost the economy, [excessive regulation] would be disastrous,” was already indignant Richard Allan in an article published by the Financial Times.

The facial recognition technology is yet controversial even in the country of origin of Mark Zuckerberg. Earlier this week, nine associations for the defense of consumer rights and freedoms have stormed out of an initiative organized by the US government to regulate the use of facial recognition by companies and authorities. “After 16 months of discussions, we decided to abandon this initiative, the participants are not even willing to accept the smallest of our privacy protections,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of resigning organizations .