(Via FuturEdition)

New Scientist reports that face recognition and search engine technologies have combined to find faces of specific people online.

A search engine that uses sophisticated facial recognition to allow users to identify and find people in online images will launch next month. But civil liberties groups say the biometric-style tool could compromise the privacy of anyone who has their picture online. Search engine Polar Rose reconstructs the 3D shape of a person’s face and then combines that with characteristics of their features to generate a unique “face print”. This can then be used to search other photos for a match.