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Image Scrubber: tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests

everestpipkin.github.io

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Re: Image Scrubber: tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests

#81
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah justice. It is better that ten innocent persons suffer than that one guilty escape. -- Bizzaro William Blackstone

Is this meant to be sarcasm? (Honest question)

Yes - the actual phrase is "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer".

Re: Image Scrubber: tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests

#82
Assuming this tool was intended for those who want to share photos on social media, Facebook and Instagram already strip metadata out from the photos you share otherwise anybody could scrape the photo and get metadata. I'm not sure for Twitter tho but I think it is the same.

Re: Image Scrubber: tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests

#83
post #70

While I can't make useful comments on protests or strong anonymity, wrt photo metadata, I can say that I scrub metadata from photos that leave my possession, as a matter of course, using 'exiftool'. Here is how you read the existing metadata: exiftool -a -u -g1 IMG_0708.JPG | more ... and here is how you scrub it: exiftool -all= IMG_0708.JPG (you could read it again, after scrubbing, to demonstrate it is gone ...)

I've had this function added to my shell for years:

   stripexif () 
   { 
       exiftool -all= "$@"
   }

Re: Image Scrubber: tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests

#84
post #65
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who do not click through to the article: “Police say that there is no evidence the deaths have anything to do with the protests”. From my time in Portland, working at the courthouse as a court clerk during the Occupy movement, when hundreds of transient “protesters” camped out in the park, it is not surprising that some of those folks would OD or end up dead for reasons entirely not related to protesting bu…

Why would the police say otherwise? Nice critical thinking.

The article just has these people loosely connected or "active" in the protests. One of them attended the protests, one launched a tear gas canister back at the police, one's mother attended the protests, etc. These aren't the main organizers or leaders dying mysteriously, but rather random attendees dying.

Is this more or less than the number of attendees we would expect to die based on Ferguson homicide rates and approximations of the number of attendees? I couldn't find that in the article.

Also, what's the theory that this isn't a coincidence? The police are murdering random protestors for some reason?

Re: Image Scrubber: tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests

#85
post #37

The protests are being live-streamed on Facebook, twitch, YouTube etc. So while they is interesting, it is ultimately useless. The data is already out there.

Not if you hijack the camera directly* :) [1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/creativetech_tensorflowjs-bod...

I'm not sure what is the purpose of this extension since you can have audio meeting or audio conference call if you don't want to show your face.

Re: Image Scrubber: tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests

#86

Assuming this tool was intended for those who want to share photos on social media, Facebook and Instagram already strip metadata out from the photos you share otherwise anybody could scrape the photo and get metadata. I'm not sure for Twitter tho but I think it is the same.

Twitter also strips exif data from displayed images. That said, I would assume that all social media platforms permanently store that data (even though it's not in the displayed image), and would be forced to give it up under subpoena.

Re: Image Scrubber: tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests

#87
post #14

How resilient is blurring against deconvolution?

Can deconvolution create new data? I thought it was just a way to upscale images.

I think you may be confusing deconvolution as the term is used in neural network literature with deconvolution as defined in mathematics/signal processing.

Re: Image Scrubber: tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m reminded of a reddit thread a while back about the US government paying a large sum to create an “unblur” function for photoshop. Someone in the comments was able to rotate and flip a photo and use the photoshop blur tool to effectively undo a blur for free. Perhaps it’s better to remove the section of photo with a person’s face instead? Or draw a shape over their face and flatten the image? It seems to me as lon…

Blurring isn't that good at destroying information, I think we mostly use it because it's the best looking censoring attempt. I would pixelate the faces to be just 4x4 giant pixels. It destroys nearly as much information as blacking them out while still not disrupting the image too much

Here's a good read on undoing blurs: https://yuzhikov.com/articles/BlurredImagesRestoration1.htm

The short explanation is blurs are kernels that spread a pixel's value across other pixels, so knowing this, you can treat blurred pixel values as a system of equations to solve.

Re: Image Scrubber: tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I hear your first point, I consider the possibility that these are not retaliatory murders, but rather ways to keep something secret. If there was an agenda behind these riots organized at a higher level than these leaders, similar to what is being suggested by some during these current protests, and those higher level organizers wanted to keep the agenda or those who set it hidden, it could explain why lower le…

> When I hear your first point, I consider the possibility that these are not retaliatory murders, but rather ways to keep something secret. That contains as much conspiracy as "somebody is hunting down the protestors". There are simpler possible explanations, I believe, e.g. people who join (or organize) riots are usually not the stable boring kind that live long, predictable lives full of planning and quiet afterno…

There are definitely much simpler explanations, and they are true 99.9% of the time. I think it's worth considering the complex explanations for the exceedingly rare times they happen to be true, especially if the complex explanations claim the stakes are high.

Re: Image Scrubber: tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests

#90

Assuming this tool was intended for those who want to share photos on social media, Facebook and Instagram already strip metadata out from the photos you share otherwise anybody could scrape the photo and get metadata. I'm not sure for Twitter tho but I think it is the same.

Twitter also strips exif data from displayed images. That said, I would assume that all social media platforms permanently store that data (even though it's not in the displayed image), and would be forced to give it up under subpoena.

"all social media platforms permanently store that data" exactly but storing metadata has 2 purposes; one for security reasons and second for analyzing the data and creating advertising solutions based on that data.
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