My dad, Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali, my father, has never been afraid of confronting conflicts outside of the ring. His recent attempt to free two hikers held captive in Iran reinforces his relentless effort to promote peace, tolerance and humanity around the world.

His work as an ambassador for peace extends as far back as 1985, when he flew to Lebanon to try to secure the release of four hostages. Before the first Gulf War, Ali flew to Iraq to help negotiate the release of 15 American hostages. In his most recent plea to Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, Ali said he would leave in a second for Tehran if it would help bring American hikers Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer safely home.

Today, we are in greater need of heroes like my father, especially in a sports culture where athletes seem to be chasing fame merely for the pleasure of making money or breaking records. There is little awareness of the responsibilities that accompany fame. On this Father's Day weekend, I extend my gratitude to my father. Helping strangers in need has always been his insatiable drive.

He says: "I've always wanted to be more than just a boxer. More than just the three-time heavyweight champion. I wanted to use my fame, and this face that everyone knows so well, to help uplift and inspire people around the world. I've made my share of mistakes along the way but if I have changed even one life for the better, I haven't lived in vain."

Ali has sought every opportunity to address injustice, as he explained to an Israeli citizen, while commenting about the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

He said: "Although I am a Muslim, I don't understand the problems that the two countries have been having over the years. But I know that all people are God's people, regardless of race, religion or color, and I know that God is not for war or violence ... he is for peace. So I think that whatever people are involved -- whether they are Israelis or Arabs or Puerto Ricans or Chinese -- I think that it's nice to see the countries who don't agree religiously, countries who don't agree politically on many things, that they can make some kind of bond to stop killing and bombing regardless of what other countries may say. So I can sympathize with any country regardless of their beliefs -- whether I agree or not -- that they are tired of suffering so many casualties."

Those principles are even more relevant today in places like Libya, Syria, and Egypt, and most importantly in our own hearts, where all change begins.

While most people recognize Ali as a fighter who annihilated his opponents in the ring, he is also a gentle man. Although his voice and movement are not as sharp as they once were, he has a clear mind and pure heart. No matter where he is, his intentions are always the same: to greet as many of his fans as he can and to help others in need.

Those qualities are exemplified at the Ali Center, in Louisville, Kentucky. One of his favorite gifts is a jeweled white robe presented by Elvis Presley, adorned with the words "The People's Champion." It is a symbol of his responsibility of fame and a fitting title for the man who always puts people first, especially the oppressed.

In spite of his physical limitations, my father is actively living a full, prosperous life. When he's not creating his latest art work, he loves taking a scenic drive up in the hills of Paradise Valley in Scottsdale, Arizona, with the sounds of James Brown or Sam Cooke playing softly. My father has always enjoyed the simple pleasures of life. He has a caring wife and nine children who love him dearly. He's living a rich, full life with few regrets and he is at peace with himself. What more could anyone hope for?

He says: "For all kids and people around the world -- if you want to be The Greatest -- stand up for each other. Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves and always be true to yourself. When you reach the mountain top, try not to look down on any one. Treat all people with kindness and respect. No matter how famous we get, no matter how wealthy we become, it is only the heart that makes us great or small. Remember the responsibilities that come with fame. There will be little boys and girls looking up to you. Lead them well."

For over 50 years, Muhammad Ali has exemplified the finest as it pertains to the responsibility of fame. On this Father's Day, I imagine my father's prayers will be reaching for a peaceful way to secure the release of those two American hikers, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer; not because they are from one nation, but rather because they are united by the same cause and are brothers in humanity.

Happy Father's Day, Daddy! You are a champion in every sense of the word. I adore you and so does the world. God bless you.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Hana Ali.

Google making app that would identify people's faces

Santa Monica, California (CNN) -- Google is working on a mobile application that would allow users to snap pictures of people's faces in order to access their personal information, a director for the project said this week.

In order to be identified by the software, people would have to check a box agreeing to give Google permission to access their pictures and profile information, said Hartmut Neven, the Google engineering director for image-recognition development.

Google's Profiles product includes a user's name, phone number and e-mail address. Google has not said what personal data might be displayed once a person is identified by its facial-recognition system.

"We recognize that Google has to be extra careful when it comes to these [privacy] issues," Neven told CNN in an exclusive interview. "Face recognition we will bring out once we have acceptable privacy models in place."

While Google has begun to establish how the privacy features would work, Neven did not say when the company intends to release the product, and a Google spokesman said there is not a release timeline.

The technology wouldn't necessarily be rolled out in a separate app, a Google spokesman said. Instead, facial recognition could be issued as an update to an existing Google tool, such as its image search engine.

Google has had the technical capabilities to implement this type of search engine for years.

Just as Google has crawled trillions of Web pages to deliver results for traditional search queries, the system could be programmed to associate pictures publicly available on Facebook, Flickr and other photo-sharing sites with a person's name, Neven said. "That we could do today," he said.

But those efforts had frequently stalled internally because of concerns within Google about how privacy advocates might receive the product, he said.

"People are asking for it all the time, but as an established company like Google, you have to be way more conservative than a little startup that has nothing to lose," said Neven, whose company Neven Vision was acquired by Google in 2006. "Technically, we can pretty much do all of these things."

Neven Vision specialized in object and facial recognition development. The object-related programs are reflected in an image search engine, called Goggles. The face-recognition technology was incorporated into Picasa, Google's photo-sharing service, helping the software recognize friends and family members in your computer's photo library.

In 2009, Google acquired a company called Like.com, which specialized in searching product images but also did work in interpreting pictures of people. Google has also filed for patents in the area of facial recognition.

Privacy concerns

As Google's size and clout grow, so does the chorus of critics who say the company frequently encroaches on people's privacy. Over the years, Google has made various missteps.

The company agreed to pay $8.5 million last year in a legal settlement over grievances that its Buzz social-networking service published the names of people with whom Gmail users regularly communicated. Google quickly fixed the problem, but its repercussions are still being felt: On Wednesday, Google announced it had reached an agreement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to receive an independent review of privacy procedures once every two years.

Google also faces numerous inquiries from governments regarding information collected by its Street View vans. Developers who report to Neven work on aspects of that street-level photography initiative -- mainly privacy-minded features such as the automatic blurring of faces and license plates, he said.

Google also is concerned about the legal implications of facial recognition. Even during trials among its own employees, Google has taken steps to ensure testers have explicitly agreed on record to try out the service.

The novelty of this sort of product may help attract early adopters. But policies would need to be uncomplicated and straightforward to keep users from abandoning it over privacy concerns, experts said.

"Online, people don't think about the privacy concerns; they think about the fun activities they're doing," said Karen North, director of a University of Southern California program that studies online privacy. "They're going to have to figure out a way where people who like the ease and fun of some of these technologies ... online don't feel burned at any given point. Because once they feel burned, they'll opt out."

North said she believes Google has a tendency to push boundaries in order to outdo competitors. The service could push too far by, say, aggregating every photo of a user it finds on the internet without giving that user an easy way to erase certain images, she said.

"Google, in all the best ways, has put itself in a very difficult position -- that no matter what they do, they have to do it biggest and best," North said. "They have trouble starting small and building up because they're Google."

A 'cautious route'

Google acknowledges the nefarious ways someone could leverage facial-recognition technology.

Many people "are rightfully scared of it," Neven said. "In particular, women say, 'Oh my God. Imagine this guy takes a picture of me in a bar, and then he knows my address just because somewhere on the Web there is an association of my address with my photo.' That's a scary thought. So I think there is merit in finding a good route that makes the power of this technology available in a good way."

Neven and a Google spokesman described the facial-recognition app concept as "conservative" in relation to privacy.

"I think we are taking a sort of cautious route with this," the spokesman said. "It's a sensitive area, and it's kind of a subjective call on how you would do it."

While the opt-in requirement limits the app's utility, Neven foresees many circumstances where people would agree to be found.

"If you're an actor in L.A., you want to have everyone recognizing you," he said, sitting outside in the sun at Google's beachside office some 12 miles from Hollywood.

A facial-recognition app could tie in to social-networking initiatives Google is said to be working on. For example, people looking to connect online could use their phones to snap each other's pictures and instantly navigate to that person's profile, rather than having to exchange business cards or remember a user name.

This month, Google redesigned its Profiles pages in a change that more closely resembles Facebook's site. On Wednesday the company announced a new social-search tool, called +1, that allows people to share helpful search links with their friends.

Google taking more cautious stance on privacy

Rancho Palos Verdes, California (CNN) -- Google, now an Internet giant, is learning that it needs to take more careful steps in regards to privacy.

Prompted by intensifying scrutiny from government regulators and privacy watchdogs, Google is striving to be more sensitive to data-collection issues that often make people uneasy.

It went so far as to spike a recent project Google engineers had developed because of fears of potential backlash, said Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman and former CEO.

The scrapped software would have let people include their head shot photos in a database so that they could be recognized by a mobile application when someone takes a picture of their faces.

"We built that technology, and we withheld it," Schmidt said in an onstage interview at the D: All Things Digital conference here on Tuesday. "As far as I know, it was the only technology that Google built, and we decided to stop."

That product was meant to be part of an app called Google Goggles, which is able to look at a picture taken from a phone and then translate text or recognize a building, advertisement or painting. (Facial recognition is, however, being used to power a feature in Google Maps's Street View that blurs the faces of bystanders caught on camera.)

As recently as March, Google still had plans to eventually release the facial-recognition version of the app, CNN reported. Schmidt was less supportive of the idea at a conference two weeks ago when he said it was "unlikely" that Google would release the software.

With facial-recognition technology, "an evil dictator could use that against you," Schmidt said on Tuesday. "We're so sensitive on the privacy issue now."

Since Schmidt handed over the CEO reigns to co-founder Larry Page in April, the goal was to create an organization that operates more autonomously, that works like a startup, Google managers say.

But to address privacy issues, Google has inserted a layer of oversight to reduce the recklessness that many fledgling companies get away with.

"Historically, we would just throw stuff over the wall," Schmidt said. "We now have a very, very thorough process."

Company lawyers and government-policy specialists now work with the development teams as they're building products and brainstorming ideas, Schmidt said. It's their job to wrangle expectations and ensure Google doesn't overstep "the creepy line" (to borrow a phrase from Schmidt).

Regulators say Google has crossed that line before, with its camera-taking vehicles and with Google Buzz. The latter attracted the ire of the U.S. government when the service published the e-mail contact lists for users. As a result, Google agreed to submit to reviews of its privacy policies as part of a Federal Trade Commission settlement.

Schmidt, an industry veteran, knows that a series of stumbles can scar a tech company. He said at the conference that software giant Microsoft is no longer a top player among tech brands.

"Microsoft is not driving the consumer revolution in the mind of consumers," Schmidt said. (However, it's worth noting that in an interview with the Wall Street Journal last year, Schmidt named Microsoft, with its Bing search engine, as Google's biggest competitor, ahead of Apple and Facebook.)

Schmidt's big four is Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook and (you guessed it) Google. Honorary mentions go to Twitter and PayPal. Coincidentally, the latter is suing Google over its new mobile-payments service, called Google Wallet, which launches in Portland on Wednesday and was demonstrated at the event.

Apple, which Google competes with on smartphones and soon laptops, was a recipient of much praise from Schmidt. He said Apple makes "beautiful products" and has just renewed a deal to use Google's search and maps services. He suggested people buy Mac computers over Microsoft's Windows PCs if they're concerned about getting viruses -- "speaking as a proud former board member of Apple," he said.

Besides including Facebook in his list of top companies, Schmidt had little else to laud the social network for. The site is about connecting with "every friend you've ever had, including the ones you can't quite remember," he said. Google has tried to partner with Facebook, but Microsoft usually wins those deals, he said.

Facebook, too, has had to walk a privacy tightrope when rolling out new features. Responding to a question about Facebook's growing presence, Schmidt said: "I think the industry would benefit from having an alternative."

French TV, radio programs slapped with social media restriction

Paris (CNN) -- A decree from the early 1990s, reimplemented by French regulators, is putting an end to French television and radio announcers naming social networking sites on air except for news purposes.

The decree banned "clandestine advertising": the promotion of a brand outside the boundaries of recognized publicity avenues.

The reimplementation of the ruling by France's Superior Audiovisual Council means that French programs will no longer be able to urge their viewers or listeners to follow them on specific sites, such as Twitter, as has become the norm in worldwide broadcasting.

The controversy began when an unnamed French TV channel approached the council to ask whether, under this decree, they had the right to direct viewers to social sites.

Christine Kelly, spokeswoman for the council explained: "Facebook and Twitter are commercial brands like Coca-Cola or L'Oreal or any other. There are many social networking sites on many topics -- cooking, animals -- why should we mention one and not others?"

From now on news anchors will be able to give only vague instructions as to where to find information online, such as "follow us on social networking sites."

French bloggers have been up in arms on Twitter and some have even composed tongue-in-cheek ways to get round the ban. One suggested: "find live coverage of the trial on our thread on the platform which spreads messages of 140 characters"

French commentators have been speculating on the real roots of this regulation. Matthew Fraser, a social networking expert and author of "Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom," a book looking at the online social media revolution, believes the ban could be a sign of defiance against Anglo-Saxon cultural domination.

"In my mind," he said, "if it had been a French social networking site then nobody would have wanted it to be regulated, but because these sites symbolize the United States, regulation is there."

This is not the first time anglicized, Internet-related vocabulary has been banned in France. In 2003 the use of the word "e-mail" was forbidden in all government literature. This was due to the Toubon law, which tries to protect the purity of the French language from anglicized words and phrases.

This time, however, the Superior Audiovisual Council insists that the ban is in no way linked to language purity.

"It's not at all related. It's true that we are very attached to the French language and defend it a lot, but ... this is simply about reapplying existing regulations," Kelly said.

The council's decision did not cause much of a debate in the French media. Fraser believes that unlike cheese or wine there were no French interests involved and the French are simply used to regulation. "It doesn't faze them because it's part of their culture," he said.

Kelly emphasized the cultural differences that need to be taken in to account: "We have many, many rules which do not exist elsewhere. There is a very different context for this from one country to another. In the U.S., for example there are advertisements on TV every five minutes, whereas in France its more like every 20 minutes." She added that, similarly, in the United States product placement is commonplace, but it is forbidden in France.

Many are struck by the bizarre timing of the ban as it comes on the heels of the e-G8, an internet summit in Paris at which President Nicolas Sarkozy met with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook brings facial recognition to photo tagging

(Mashable) -- Facebook Photos, one of the social network's most popular features, is getting a big and potentially controversial upgrade with a new feature that automatically suggests who users should tag in photos based on facial recognition technology.

The new feature, Tag Suggestions, will begin rolling out to U.S. users next week, according to Facebook Vice President of Product Chris Cox.

He told us that the product utilizes technology that was built in-house, as well as some technology that came from partners. Cox did not disclose the partners Facebook worked with for Tag Suggestions, although we have our suspicions.

Tag Suggestions is fairly straightforward. Whenever you're offered the chance to tag groups of your friends in an album, Facebook will utilize its facial recognition technology to group similar faces together and automatically suggest the friend you should tag them with.

Facebook fills in the "Who is this?" box with its suggestion -- all you have to do is click the "Save Tags" button to accept.

Cox says that suggestions will only appear when its algorithms have "high confidence" of who's being suggested. Unlike Face.com, Facebook doesn't reveal its certainty level and wouldn't reveal what percentage actually correlates to "high confidence."

The social giant is also preemptively addressing the potential privacy issues that will be brought up from automatic, algorithmic tagging. Users can opt out of Tag Suggestions by going to their privacy settings and disabling the "Suggest photos of me to friends" feature.

This release is part of a bigger effort to upgrade Photos. Earlier this year, Facebook launched a slew of upgrades, including bigger thumbnails, group tagging and drag-and-drop photos.

This may be the biggest upgrade for Photos yet, though. Photo tagging is considered a chore by many users, yet it is the company's most popular product.

"Photos are by far the most engaging content Facebook has ever had," Cox told us earlier today.

By vastly simplifying the tagging process, Facebook expects that its millions of users will tag more photos, which will create millions of new engagement points and social connections, making it that much more addicting.

Gupta: Cell phones, brain tumors and a wired earpiece

By Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Chief Medical Correspondent

Just about every time I use a cell phone, I plug in my wired earpiece first. Having discussed the use of earpieces on several news shows, people expect to see me using one. If I am walking around the CNN studios, my colleagues often comment on it. In airports, people will stop me in the rare cases I forget to use the earpiece, and remind me about it. Perhaps, they are intrigued because I am a neurosurgeon who openly shows some concern about cell phones.

Truth is, it is a pretty easy thing to do – using an earpiece. Furthermore, my neck doesn’t hurt after being on the phone for a long conference call, and given that many of those calls take place in a car, an earpiece becomes a requirement. Still, though, I don’t want to dodge the obvious question: Do cell phones cause brain cancer?

It may be too early to say for sure. The latency period or time between exposure and recognition of a tumor is around 20 years, sometimes longer. And, cell phone use in the U.S. has been popular for only around 15 years. Back in 1996, there were 34 million cell phone users. Today there are 9-10 times as many. Keeping that in mind, it is worth taking a more detailed look at the results of Interphone, a multinational study designed to try to answer this question.

The headline from this study was there was little or no evidence to show an association between cell phones and cancer. Though, if you went to the appendix of the study, which interestingly was available only online, you found something unsettling. The data showed people who used a cell phone 10 years or more doubled the risk of developing a glioma, a type of brain tumor. And, across the board – most of the studies that have shown an increased risk are from Scandinavia, a place where cell phones have been popular since the early 1990s. For these reasons, the whole issue of latency could become increasingly important.

Cell phones use non-ionizing radiation, which is very different from the ionizing radiation of X-rays, which everyone agrees are harmful. Non-ionizing radiation won’t strip electrons or bust up DNA. It's more like very low power microwaves. Short term, these microwaves are likely harmless, but long term could be a different story. Anyway, who likes the idea of a microwave, even a low-powered one, next to their head all day?

And, what about kids? I have three of them, aged 5, 4 and 2. Fact is, they are more likely to lead to my early demise than cell phones. But, as hard as it is to believe sometimes, they actually have thinner skulls than adults, and will probably be using cell phones longer than I ever will.

The first person to encourage me to regularly wear an ear piece was Dr. Keith Black. He also is a neurosurgeon, and makes a living removing – you guessed it – brain tumors. Keith has long believed there is a link, and for some time, his was a lonely voice in this discussion. Nowadays, he has loud and prominent voices accompanying him. Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, sent a memo warning staffers to limit their cell phone use. One of the possible consequences, he says, is an increased risk of brain cancer. The city of San Francisco is trying to pass an ordinance requiring radiation warning labels on all cell phones. The European Environmental Agency has said cell phones could be as big a public health risk as smoking, asbestos and leaded gasoline. Even the makers of cell phones suggest you don’t place a device against your head, but rather advocate holding it 5/8 to a full inch away.

Many will roll their eyes at this, scoffing at the precautionary principle on display here. Fair enough. Still, I like my wired earpiece, and I don’t have to turn my life upside down to use it. I also text and email a lot more, because my kids rarely allow me to have a phone conversation. Speaking of kids, you will probably see mine using earpieces too, when my wife and I decide they are old enough to use one, which isn’t in the foreseeable future.

With reporting from CNN's Danielle Dellorto

Mobile subscriptions hit 5 billion mark

2 million additions per day

· More than 500 million 3G subscriptions

· 50 billion connected devices by 2020

This week marked yet another milestone in the internet becoming mobile when the 5 billionth mobile subscription added to the count, largely thanks to emerging markets like India and China.

According to Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) estimates based on industry information, the 5 billionth subscription was added Thursday, July 8.

In the year 2000, about 720 million people had mobile subscriptions, less than the amount of users China alone has today.

Mobile broadband subscriptions are growing at similar pace and are expected to amount to more than 3.4 billion by 2015 (from 360 million in 2009). Studies show that soon 80 percent of all people accessing the internet will be doing so using their mobile device.

For some it's a question of convenience, for others a necessity. Mobile subscriptions allow people who don't have access to a bank or a bank account to transfer money; fishermen and farmers can get quick updates on sudden changes in the weather forecast, villagers to get local medical care, and children to access online education. It facilitates daily operations of small businesses and drives economic growth.

In more mature markets, connected devices rather than people, are driving the increase in network traffic. According to Ericsson's vision we will reach 50 billion connections within this decade.

The communication landscape is changing rapidly and in December of last year, another milestone was reached when the amount of data traffic carried over mobile networks exceeded the amount of traffic generated from voice calls.

Machine-to-machine communications, or M2M, will be a key component in the future growth of the mobile industry. For energy companies it could be smart meters that read themselves, increase business efficiency and cut operational expenses. In transportation - tracking solutions improve route optimization and safety for vehicles on the road. Digital signs that can be updated remotely, cameras that can send pictures halfway around the world and even a soda machine that requests restocking when needed are other examples that machine-to-machine technology make possible.