this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Privacy
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If you give your ID to a 3rd party company in the US, it's impossible to know if they will delete you ID or whether you'll be added secretly to a facial recognition system.
The US is allowed to issue secret orders to companies demanding they do things in the interest of "security." They can also issue gag orders forcing companies to not talk about the secret orders. Therefore, any US company may be secretly forced to violate it's supposed terms. A company that collects biometric information seems like it would be especially likely to be targeted.
Facebook, Instagram, and other social media such as Linked In are likely the largest source of law enforcement information being fed to facial recognition systems. Given the dystopian "ideals" of some politicians, I consider it a risk and wouldn't do it. Your country may not be sharing that information with the US already.
Additionally, some of these companies have become the main way people get employed, rent things, or buy things. Because these companies serve a public function but are officially private, they can de-platform people for any reason, with no meaningful appeal, creating havoc and misery for an affected person. If you have been flagged to be banned, by giving them your ID, you will let them ban you based on a government document forever. Their system may have flagged you for verification, but it could have also flagged you to be banned forever based on TOS violations.
If you abandon your account, you can always create a new account, then later claim a hacker got you or your forgot your email password. If you provide an ID, you may be linking a government record to biometric information to something they can ban.
A company may also be claiming that they get rid of an ID but still keep a hash of some combination of biometric information.
In theory, anyone in Facebook in California should be able to submit a CCPA request to delete all information, including ban information, and then go on Facebook again, even after a lifetime ban. Anyone in the EU should be able to do this too through GDPR. But this doesn't happen, because Facebook lies and is also just a rebranding of Lifelog.