Preannotation Technique

(via Wired) A new facial-recognition algorithm created by Allen Yang, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley's College of Engineering is able to recognize faces with 90-95 percent accuracy, even if the eyes, nose and mouth are obscured + according to Shankar Sastry, the dean of UC Berkeley's College of Engineering, Yang's new facial-detection method also renders years of research in the field obsolete.

I think the new technique will pave the way for new business (startups) models + privacy issues + security concerns.

Useful links:
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~yang
http://perception.csl.uiuc.edu/recognition/Home.html