
Hacking your face to dodge the rise of facial recognition tech - tosh
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/avoid-facial-recognition-software
======
rebuilder
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 assumption of mass surveillance is that the individuals in
societies can not be trusted to work for the best of the society and must be
left no option but to conform to the law. This is in stark contrast to the
idea that citizens generally see their society as something they wish to
preserve, and legislation and law enforcement exists to modify incentives in
cases where altruism, self-interest and a sense of social responsibility are
insufficient to keep order.

In other words, to support a surveillance society is to give up on the
foundations of a democratic society that works to support the goals of its
citizens, in favour of a society that treats its citizens as subjects to be
ruled over.

This is, of course, a much harder political argument to make than "the tech
doesn't work", but it's an argument that needs to be made because one day, the
tech will work.

~~~
cerealbad
can a democratic society vote itself into a dictatorship? what if some
citizens want to subvert democracy and liberal social norms, but do so
democratically? democracy is a discussion of ideas. it is your job to convince
people that freedom is advantageous to global governance or that they can be
combined.

with freedom you will get fracture and economic decline, conflict and
instability. with global governance you will get a monopoly on stable world
trade and endless economic and civic prosperity, as the best ideas will be
rapidly adopted by the most number of people, ensuring benefit for all
generations of mankind yet unborn.

what if it turns out that your perception of freedom is not maximal freedom
unless people freely choose it? and if they abandon it (for what you might
consider a type of mental slavery) to a dynamic but perpetual system of
control-information with new benefits far outweigh any negative consequences,
like the ability to understand all preceding human knowledge in one lifespan
or avoid all disease and aging related problems.

humanity once we reached the age of writing, became the game of convincing
other people to think and act alike. i cant think of a more illiberal and
limiting idea than what i am doing right now - forcing my words into your head
- yet this is the structure upon which everything we see has been built.

you will find yourself in an increasingly marginalized position, and
eventually your views will be silenced, as they should. you may be civilized,
but barely register as a barbarian for what is to come, which will take yet
more centuries to unfold.

(28m42s)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TQZ-2iMUR0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TQZ-2iMUR0)

~~~
sieabahlpark
A democracy in theory can do anything if the sole description is democratic
choice.

However in practice you have constitutions and inalienable rights which would
prevent a dictatorship from being voted in. Unless of course you everyone
involved is okay with breaking the law to gain control.

------
DonHopkins
Leigh Bowery was a dazzling face (and body) hacking visionary.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_Bowery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_Bowery)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxbqk7xjA5o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxbqk7xjA5o)

[https://nl.pinterest.com/orchidsatellite/leigh-bowery-
stylin...](https://nl.pinterest.com/orchidsatellite/leigh-bowery-styling-
shoot/?lp=true)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3yVBhVrltU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3yVBhVrltU)

Edit: (bigbangchina: I wouldn't exactly characterize Wigstock as a "feminist
gathering"...)

He was the main inspiration of the Tranimal movement, which also gives facial
recognition systems a hard time.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranimal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranimal)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_vZ9P2LSRs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_vZ9P2LSRs)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqoN3AUdl0k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqoN3AUdl0k)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atKmBOnjpzQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atKmBOnjpzQ)

------
huffmsa
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.

~~~
gruez
What about allowing burqas, but requiring a "license plate" to be affixed?

~~~
huffmsa
Plausible. Rfid or some other pingable ID marker.

You'll still get a fight about something physically visible though. Too much
Jew with a gold star connotation.

~~~
faceplanted
Kind of an interesting connection there, hard to say that having a marking on
your burqa somehow makes it more obvious you're a Muslim.

Would be weird to walk around with a licence plate style identifier though,
since anyone could scan it and follow you rather than just someone with a
massive facial recognition database.

honestly the thing I don't like about facial recognition is that it could
somehow become mandatory in a country where you're not even required to carry
any kind of national ID unless you're driving, and it's suddenly your problem
if a facial recognition system you didn't consent to can't recognise you.

~~~
huffmsa
It becomes mandatory and the "social credit" system follows shortly
thereafter.

You stop being an individual and become a cog in the national machine.

------
L_226
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

~~~
Freak_NL
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…

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

------
pteredactyl
It's sad we have to hide from our 'elected' western government.

~~~
daveslash
I agree with you completely; I opt out of the scanners at the airport every
time on that very principle alone. But, I would also assert that most people
would not agree that " _we have to hide_ ".

~~~
1001101
Tried that once. Got the German shepherd scanner instead.

~~~
daveslash
Where was that? I've only ever experienced the "advanced patdown".

~~~
1001101
This was on the way from our hometown in the midwest to points Scandinavian.
While this was going on, my daughter got the "advanced patdown," and she still
mentions it when I bring up traveling :( Went from loving it to not
interested.

------
nukeop
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.

~~~
zazibar
Corporate greed has no bounds.

------
zachguo
Face hacking doesn't necessarily have to be hi-tech. Maybe more and more
people in future will dress like activists. Mouth mask may become an important
fashion piece, which is already happening in East Asian societies.

~~~
pmoriarty
I've read that wearing masks in public is illegal in the US.

The laws that made public mask wearing illegal were from an age when the KKK
used masks to hide themselves when committing violent crimes and for
intimidation purposes.

~~~
swiley
It's not just illegal, I believe it's a felony in my state.

~~~
jjeaff
Except on Halloween? What about on your way to a masquerade party?

~~~
swiley
Carrying open containers of alcohol isn't legal to from a party either.

------
newscracker
The fundamental issue with all surveillance mechanisms is that it's the exact
opposite of foundational legal principles like presumption of innocence. [1]
If anyone or everyone could be guilty of something _if only they were caught
in the act,_ and if judges accept such evidence as prime and override any
suspicions that these are beyond reasonable doubt and ignore the fact that
these could have error rates or be completely falsified, [2] then law
enforcement and prosecution wouldn't have to work hard. It's questionable if
law enforcement really works hard in any country and does what it's expected
to by the common people; it seems to be a continuous power game (and power
grab) in many places where law enforcement is becoming more and more
militarized.

Biometric and behavioral recognition, profiling and tracking will turn all
democracies into namesakes and into dictatorships where people will always
self-censor because they don't want to get into any trouble. There is a bigger
chance that more (not all) activists will be marginalized and silenced through
different means. That would be a tragedy for everyone. "Nothing to hide" would
seem like a cruel joke that thoughtless people of the past played on the
future.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence)

[2]: Even routine evidence collected and processed today could have error
rates or be falsified, but there seem to be trends where technology is
perceived as being infallible, and is trusted completely on first sight.

------
codedokode
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...](https://advox.globalvoices.org/2016/04/07/the-russian-art-of-meta-
stalking/)

[2] [http://searchface.ru/](http://searchface.ru/)

------
kowdermeister
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.

------
ddelt
The world seems to become more and more like Minority Report every day I read
an article like this.

------
0815test
"Hacking your face to dodge the rise of facial recognition"? I mean, it's not
that it wouldn't _work_ , in a way - but it strikes me as a rather gruesome
approach!

------
upofadown
>And while FR may be error-prone now, this is unlikely to stay the case for
long.

Well less error prone. There are only so many different possible faces. Even
people will routinely misidentify faces in a crowd. They need to use hair,
clothing and context to avoid constantly saying hello to strangers.

There will always be a reasonably high level of false positives...

------
mkgolden
The self checkout lines in walmart and target have a HD camera right in your
face. I have always found these disturbing, they aren't even looking at what
I'm buying. Do you guys think they are using facial recognition on these
streams?

~~~
binaryorganic
Most modern checkout experiences can identify you with very high accuracy
sans-camera, so I doubt it.

~~~
logifail
What percentage of shoppers are already carrying the store's loyalty card and
are willingly presenting it at the checkout?

What percentage of shoppers have the store's app loaded on their smartphone
and carry that willing around too?

~~~
olyjohn
I went to the mall last week for the first time in ages. About half of the
directories were replaced with signs telling you to install the Westfield
shopping app, for "TURN BY TURN DIRECTIONS" through the mall. Like, really?
There are only 2 walkways through the mall...

------
scoutt
_" an array of tiny infrared LEDs wired to the inside of a baseball cap"_

I had that idea some years ago, but using instead big powerful IR LEDs around
a hat or cap to create a sort of white _halo_ around the entire head. Never
tested it...

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

~~~
Freak_NL
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.)_

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

~~~
ytjohn
Naomi Wu (@realsexycyborg) recently demo'd a "downskirt" cam for similar
purposes. It basically shows the back of the legs and functions like a back-up
camera on a vehicle.

[https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/103896197816802918...](https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1038961978168029184)
(slightly nsfw)

------
MR4D
A link in the article about getting a 3D-printed model of someone else's face
makes me wonder how long before the Yellow-vests in France figure this out and
print out a copy of Macron's face to use in their protests?

------
gcoda
i am sure that in a few years most of people will hide face behind AR mask
anyway.

but there is lots of ways to recognize people against their will, combination
of height walking style, radio signals from wearables, and maybe even odor

------
marcus_holmes
coincidence that this appeared at the same time as
[https://qz.com/299003/a-quick-history-of-why-asians-wear-
sur...](https://qz.com/299003/a-quick-history-of-why-asians-wear-surgical-
masks-in-public/) ?

I think not...

------
dwighttk
need to get one of them hyperface scarves...

