by FRED CHARUNDER-MACHARRUNDEIRA, Alternate Reality News Service Science Writer
A group of immortals are suing ICU Incorporated, makers of PimentoEyes software, for invasion of privacy.
When you supply PimentoEyes (in Georgia - the country, not the state - the word "pimento" means "may a hairy yak take a liking to your Volvo;" in Georgia - the state, not the country - the word means "the dish is not hot enough") with a photograph of a face, it finds other images online of the same face. And why would anybody want to do that? Well, because...I mean, obviously, there's a very good reason to...umm...do that, and the reason is...
"Revenge porn," whispered Gyorgi "Pyorgi" Gobroenorganidze, developer of the software.
PimentoEyes could be used to create revenge porn? That doesn't seem like such a good reason to -
"No," Gobroenorganidze interrupted the narrative flow, "the programme can be used to discover if somebody has created revenge porn with you in it."
Oh. Because knowing that images of you being sexual all over the place being placed on the internet without your consent even though there's not much you can do to stop it is better than now knowing?
Gobroenorganidze shrugged. "Knowledge is power," he intoned. "Even if it is powerless..."
The problem with PimentoEyes is that anybody can use a photo of any other person to see what other images of them are on the Internet. You might think that this is a lawsuit just waiting to happen (especially if you're not the kind of person who starts reading newspaper articles from the eighth paragraph on). You would be right.
"I've been a citizen of this country since before it even was a country" complained Giovanni Hersuite, one of the people involved in the class action suit. "Hell, over the centuries I've paid more in taxes than the state of Maryland has collected in all the time it has existed. I think I have earned some damn privacy!"
A three year-old picture (it was barely out of diapers) of Hersuite in a crowd at a Boston Rebellionists AAA baseball game (where they used a cannon to shoot batteries into the crowd for no discernible reason and to much medical harm to the teams fans) led a PimentoEyes user to a line drawing of a man advising General George Washington to do something about his teeth (the newspaper that had run the image had been digitized and placed in the Kiddie Wing of The Smithsonian Online). This led to an online disagreement over whether Hersuite was a vampire or somebody who had made a pact with the devil to get eternal life.
Hersuite rolled his eyes. "The protests at my home and work, I could live with," he said. "But when the two factions got into a fistfight among themselves, well, that was just embarrassing to watch!"
"I have wandered the Earth alone since it was first created," explained another person taking part in the lawsuit, Grog the Undigestible, a god of indeterminate pantheon. "It is my curse, foretold by Jennifer, the Oracle of Smarty Pants Knowing. Uhh...before the Earth was created. Yeah, the scriptures are fuzzy on a lot of points like that. But let us focus on what's important, shall we? How am I supposed to wander the Earth alone as foretold by Jennifer if anybody with a scrying glass who can call the sprit of PimentoEyes can identify me?"
PimentoEyes had matched a photograph of Grog the Undigestible lurking in the shadows of the 2017 Coachella Music Festival with a woodcut that appeared in The Book of Celestial Addressings, an ancient text that had been digitized by Project Out of Copyright Text Preservation. Once the connection online had been made, nobody knew what to make of it, but the internet generally agreed that it wasn't natural, so it should be vehemently condemned.
"I mean, the prophecy of Jennifer didn't say anything about wandering the Earth with one or two hangers on," Grog grumped. "It certainly didn't say anything about wandering the Earth with 307,578 admirers on Twitherd, and I don't even have an account!"
"We give users an option of excluding photos from public results," Gobroenorganidze pointed out. "It's just above the photograph of a well-respected Hollywood executive putting a weasel down his pants on a dare when he was younger - you really can't miss it!"
"It costs $299 a month!" Grog complained. "I'm an ascetic! I have a - no, that doesn't make me a lemon. Har har har. Very funny. I have the clothes I'm wearing and a begging bowl. Where am I supposed to come up with $299 a month!"
"They charge how much a month to keep the public from seeing your old photos‽" Hersuite marvelled. "Who do I have to talk to to buy stock in the company‽"