The use of facial recognition software by governments and online social networks continues to provide headline fodder. A Boston-area man had his driver's license revoked because when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ran a facial recognition scan of a database containing the photos of Massachusetts drivers, it flagged the man's license as a possible phony. Afterward it emerged that the system had .

In England, law enforcement officials ran photos of August riot suspects through , which is under consideration for use during the 2012 Summer Olympics in the UK. In Canada, an insurance company invited Vancouver police to use its facial recognition software to help after the Vancouver Canucks hockey team lost the seventh game of the NHL championship series.

And of course Facebook endured a hailstorm of criticism in June when it announced its plans be roll out a facial recognition feature for its members to provide of photos uploaded to the social network.

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One Facebook critic was Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, who that the "surprising accuracy" of existing facial recognition software was "very concerning" to his company and that Google was "unlikely" to build a facial-recognition search system in the future.