

Through a Face Scanner Darkly - bmac27
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/02/through-a-face-scanner-darkly.html

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dredmorbius
Perhaps this fashion trend will resurface:

[http://news.discovery.com/history/art-history/venice-
masks-1...](http://news.discovery.com/history/art-history/venice-
masks-18-century-norm-041028.htm)

 _In the 17th century, Brown said noblemen, patrician women, and other wealthy
individuals began to wear masks and cloaks throughout the city. "This custom
reached its apogee in the 18th century, as you can see in paintings by Pietro
Longhi," Brown told Discovery News. She explained, "Masks and cloaks allowed
one to move about the city anonymously, and thus offered considerable
protection, as with the chador in the Islamic world. They also allowed women
to frequent dubious places of recreation, such as gambling casinos, without
compromising their respectability." She added, "It seems as if the upper class
all wandered around in public space incognito in that period (the 18th
century)."_

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fiatmoney
Many localities explicitly ban the wearing of masks in public outside of
recognized festivals.

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plg
As is the case with FB, Twitter, and the other social networks, young people
will not see a problem with this, at least while they're young. As they grow
older and live their lives, and have medical problems, have brushes with the
law, have problems at work, etc etc, and more information is collected, they
will realize one day that the sum total of the profile now collected about
them, in the cloud, is suddenly having a genuine real impact on their lives...
and it will be too late. Years too late.

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GuiA
"It’s much easier to meet interesting new people when we can simply look at
someone, see their Facebook, review their LinkedIn page, or maybe even see
their dating-site profile."

How sad.

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mortenjorck
I'm still trying to figure out just what my reaction to that sentence was. It
was some strange mixture of pathos, horror, and, contemplating a world in
which such an idea has taken hold, how to unite people against such a thing.

~~~
Zigurd
> _contemplating a world in which such an idea has taken hold_

Like any conference for the past few years already?

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Silhouette
Well, if there was ever any doubt that technology like Google Glass encourages
creepy mass surveillance and that powerful new privacy laws are overdue, I
guess there isn't any more.

As far as I can see, the path this kind of technology leads us down is only
likely to end one of two ways:

1\. We develop a more open and forgiving society that acknowledges everyone
has faults and treats everyone fairly as the person they are today.

2\. We create a society where every time you leave your home, or even in your
own home, you constantly have to guard every little thing you say or do,
including giving up all kinds of otherwise useful or enjoyable activities that
might (justifiably or otherwise) reflect unfavourably on you in the future to
someone whose opinion matters at the time.

Sadly, while there might be many people in the world who would both enjoy and
respect the first option, it's not really an option at all right now, because
there are also a lot of people in the world who will exploit personal
information at the expense of the subject. Sometimes that is simply because
they aren't very nice themselves. Sometimes it's for more indirect reasons
like the way our societies have set up commercial incentives for businesses.

As long as everything from human nature to our economic systems are stacked
against the transparency/fairness outcome, maybe it's best if we don't go too
far down that path. This seems like a great example of the saying that just
because we can do something, it doesn't mean we should.

~~~
whackedspinach
Laws may help some, but I worry that as devices get smaller and computers are
integrated into everything, they won't be able to protect us for long.
Ubiquitous computing may (in the next decade or two) actually obsolete any
expectation of privacy. We need to start acting as if every digital device
nearby is reporting information about us, because most of those devices will
soon have that capability.

In that case, I hope (1) is the outcome.

~~~
username223
You're hoping against both human nature and statistics. Even if 99% of people
are decent, that 1% will still eventually screw you over for their own profit.

Maybe it will come to active countermeasures. For example, you could set your
browser (fingerprint and all) to trawl through an invented web history to
poison tracking databases. Running such a program would both screw with the
trackers and give you plausible deniability. Tag other people's selfies with
your name on "social" sites, and tag your own with several names.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
No, he's hoping that there are fewer opportunities for you to be screwed over
for profit.

~~~
giantrobothead
Unfortunately, those opportunities appear to be as boundless as human
stupidity.

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drpgq
My advice as a research scientist at company that makes face recognition
software: big, dark sunglasses.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
How about: No online profile?

~~~
gms7777
Even if they had no online profiles that they personally created, for a lot of
people theres enough stuff online about them besides that. I have a unique
enough name that if you google my name and exclude social sites, in the first
two pages you can find, where I went to high school, college, grad school, and
what I studied there, various awards I won, sports and hobbies of mine, plenty
of photos, and my most recent jobs. None of which I personally posted online.

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ItendToDisagree
... Suddenly 'Groucho Glasses' became a standard addition to every outfit.

That is a fashion change I could agree with!

Edit: Combine with LEDs for extra fun!

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asnyder
Some interesting related pieces:

* [http://www.refinery29.com/2014/01/60361/nametag](http://www.refinery29.com/2014/01/60361/nametag)

* [http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/01/09/stalker-friendly-...](http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/01/09/stalker-friendly-app-nametag-uses-facial-recognition-to-look-you-up-online/)

Personally, I think this is very scary, especially since they're planning to
make it opt-out, so you're in the results, unless you sign up and opt-out. I'm
guessing some legislation is necessary to prevent all out abuse of this sort
of technology. There's obviously benefits to this sort of technology, but in
my opinion, should be tightly controlled.

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itg
I imagine should this take off, clothing/making that thwarts facial detection
algorithms will also increase in popularity. see
[http://cvdazzle.com](http://cvdazzle.com)

~~~
alexeisadeski3
Haha, very relevant given the thread title.

Or how about this?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fac6aHFa_k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fac6aHFa_k)

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marquis
In the future we will DDOS the surveillance systems with realistic looking
images of ourselves doing one of every kind of thing, as to blur the
boundaries of what is real and what's not.

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anigbrowl
_Orbeus, a computer-vision company, created a facial-recognition service,
called Rekognition, which promises to identify faces, detect emotion, and
determine whether or not the subject is attractive._

That seems like the sort of determination that ought to be made by the
wearer...

