> Any "commercially available facial recognition technology" is a pre-Google thing, PittPatt is no more.
I see no reason to believe this. Google certainly had an obligation to honor existing PittPatt agreements after the acquisition. And I see no reason why they wouldn't continue working with the NSA if it was in their interest.
I am very pessimistic about bulk electronic surveillance reform. One of the few points of leverage I can see is publicly making it clear when companies work with the NSA, and avoid them when possible. I would include companies that acquire companies that work with the NSA. For example, I have slowly stopped using services of the PRISM companies, including Google.
> Google certainly had an obligation to honor existing PittPatt agreements after the acquisition
[citation needed] one has to be privy to such contracts to make these conjectures, also they're software might have been of the "off the shelf" variety.
> One of the few points of leverage I can see is publicly making it clear when companies work with the NSA, and avoid them when possible. I would include companies that acquire companies that work with the NSA.
That's fine, but you should get the facts straight before lobbing accusations, as for 'companies that acquire companies' point, I don't subscribe to any guilt by association sort of animosity, this doesn't seem fair and lots of things are more connected than you think.
My main objection is that the NYT should have used "... now owned by Google" instead of "owned by Google" in their piece.
> [citation needed] one has to be privy to such contracts to make these conjectures, also they're software might have been of the "off the shelf" variety.
Fine, it's true, the contact could have said anything, including "if you are acquired, you are released of any obligations," although I find that hard to believe. Yes, and it could have been off the shelf with no support contact.
However, in my experience, having gone through an acquisition where the acquired company had existing obligations, those obligations were transferred to the acquiring company and understanding them were a large part of the due diligence.
> but you should get the facts straight before lobbing accusations
What was my accusation? All I did was quote the article. You tried to refute it -- claiming any interaction between PittPatt and the NSA was pre-Google -- by giving dates which were still entirely consistent with the article as written (docs from 2011, acquisition from July of that year).
> My main objection is that the NYT should have used "... now owned by Google" instead of "owned by Google" in their piece.
Again, I don't see any compelling evidence you've given for contracting the article as written. I'm going to have to go with the professional reporting on this one.
> as for 'companies that acquire companies' point, I don't subscribe to any guilt by association sort of animosity, this doesn't seem fair
That's fine, think whatever you want. We disagree.
Any "commercially available facial recognition technology" was a pre-Google thing, PittPatt is no more.