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Hacking your face to dodge the rise of facial recognition tech

wired.co.uk

31–40 of 69 posts

Re: Hacking your face to dodge the rise of facial recognition tech

#31
post #16

Even if you can occlude your facial features, you're probably still licked if the particular implementation has gait analysis. We need to develop a fremen-style movement system to subvert the sandworms, I mean surveillance

As much as I like the Fremen aesthetic, we should probably accept that when most of us attempt to walk without rhythm, we might succeed in not attracting the worm, but end up looking like a civil servant from the Ministry of Silly Walks in the process. Still, if that means the surveillance system concludes that we're all John Cleese…

If you walk without rhythm, you'll never learn though.

Re: Hacking your face to dodge the rise of facial recognition tech

#32
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works but gets you kicked out of all malls and supermarkets.

For women it might be easier if the LEDs are built into a hair accessory like a hairband . Less of a social stigma than a baseball cap. Glasses work too of course. (Heh. I used Wikipedia to verify the spelling of 'hair band', but ended up on a page about Glam Metal.)

It might also be useful under the belt, e.g. on skirts or underwears, to thwart upskirting attempts.

Re: Hacking your face to dodge the rise of facial recognition tech

#33

Here's a pet peeve of mine: The critique of increasing mass surveillance focuses too much on technological problems and abuses by individual humans. A fully-functioning, automated surveillance society with minimal potential for abuse by individual police etc. would be much worse than the partially-working systems we have now. A surveillance society is the antithesis of a free, democratic society. The underlying assum…

Good point about the underlying assumption and thanks for making it. I think the more people in a room that remember it, when decisions get taken, the better are the decisions that get made.

Re: Hacking your face to dodge the rise of facial recognition tech

#34
In case if anyone is interested, publicly known face recognition algorithms usually require a photo to have at least 50 px between eyes. The article says that the system used by police has 90% error rate and this is surprisingly poor result.

For comparison, an article about Russian photographer [1] says that he managed to recognise approximately 70% of people he took photo (he was recognising people in the subway to show how different people look in social networks and in real life; useless research in my opinion).

If you would like to check it for yourself, you can try demos like searchface [2] - it has indexed most of the photos from the popular social network vk.com.

I think the laws should be adapted to make face recognition illegal. Otherwise businesses and governments will want to be able to identify the citizens or customers, to collect and sell detailed data about them.

[1] https://advox.globalvoices.org/2016/04/07/the-russian-art-of...

[2] http://searchface.ru/

Re: Hacking your face to dodge the rise of facial recognition tech

#35
This is going to lead to a great episode of British political theatre.

The burqa is an effective counter measure. Full body, with a mesh eye opening.

The UK is either going to have to ban the burqa in public, at the price of being called an islamiphobic nation.

Or continue to allow the burqa, and watch as it becomes the new cartoon criminal outfit, and acknowledge that The Government has established policies favorable to Islam over other religions.

Get your popcorn and TV license ready.

Re: Hacking your face to dodge the rise of facial recognition tech

#36
I would just use a baseball hat and sunglasses which at least doesn't shout "hey, I'm actively combating facial recognition tech", look at me.

Also, if you use an obfuscation tool like this, you would mark yourself for closer inspection by human wetware which makes this approach counter productive.

Re: Hacking your face to dodge the rise of facial recognition tech

#37

Here's a pet peeve of mine: The critique of increasing mass surveillance focuses too much on technological problems and abuses by individual humans. A fully-functioning, automated surveillance society with minimal potential for abuse by individual police etc. would be much worse than the partially-working systems we have now. A surveillance society is the antithesis of a free, democratic society. The underlying assum…

> in cases where altruism, self-interest and a sense of social responsibility are insufficient to keep order

Do you believe these three traits never vary from one culture group to the next?

Re: Hacking your face to dodge the rise of facial recognition tech

#38
post #17

There's so much human effort directed at developing sci-fi level technologies to target advertising and eventually help sell you crap you don't need. We could have Mars colonies by now if that effort wasn't wasted on something so meaningless.

Corporate greed has no bounds.

Re: Hacking your face to dodge the rise of facial recognition tech

#39
post #16

Even if you can occlude your facial features, you're probably still licked if the particular implementation has gait analysis. We need to develop a fremen-style movement system to subvert the sandworms, I mean surveillance

Stick a pebble in your shoe.

Or bruise your heel or sole.
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