Facebook respects European privacy, skips facial recognition

An alternate version private photo application is now available for users in Europe and Canada, leaving out features that violate privacy laws in those locales. Most notably, the facial-recognition tool isn't included in the software, which means users will have to do a bit more work to tag and identify who's in their snapshots. Facebook says that while it left the facial recognition out, the app will group photos that "appear to include the same face." Sounds kind of like facial recognition, right? Facebook says the app now functions more like object recognition, observing things like the distance between someone's eyes and ears rather than their unique facial features.