
You can’t replace your face, says face recognition - nandha
https://blog.kaspersky.com/findface-experiment/11916/
======
rmoriz
Besides this "regular" use-case there was recently a case when some former
adult performer was doxxed using face recognition:
[http://fusion.net/story/295539/ntechlab-findface-facial-
reco...](http://fusion.net/story/295539/ntechlab-findface-facial-recognition-
accuracy-doxing/)

Now, most of you probably don't care enough, only some are doing adult stuff.
But let's imagine such a complete image/id database comes into hands of a bad
regime.

Most countries already collect and save biometric photos not even for general
passport and driver's license documents but also for health insurance issues
(like in Germany). Do you trust the health insurance company to store the
photos in a way, that no employee nor external attacker is able to "collect"
them?

CCTV cameras in public and private places are all over the country, placed in
public transportation but also in places like gas stations, restaurants, even
in the entries of restroom facilities and of course all over in airports. If
you connect all those image sources, which is not a technical problem anymore,
you can easily track people, like shown in the fictional "person of interest"
tv-series.

You can turn of or throw away your mobile phone/SIM card. But you can't change
your face.

~~~
osense
> you can't change your face.

You can obstruct it enough to confuse OpenCV:
[https://cvdazzle.com/](https://cvdazzle.com/)

I wonder if this is the future of fashion?

~~~
drdaeman
In some (quite a lot of!) jurisdictions there are already laws that prohibit
concealing ones' face. While the laws are against masks, it won't be a big
stretch (esp. for a rogue regime with a plenty of corrupt judges at hand) to
apply or extend such laws for this sort of make-up as well. All in the name of
public safety, of course.

~~~
peteretep
Japanese style health masks

~~~
Namrog84
That'll only delay the inevitable. Hair. Height. Walking patterns. Stride
Length. Each added Criteria helps improve the odds. Oh this masked person
waked out of building but they know of 28 people identified in building. So
even without identifing your face they only need to build Confidence among a
very small subset. Even if you go from building to city or country. They could
likely narrow it to high confidence especially if they can actively ID the
locations of all others with similar characteristics as you.

------
jwatte
A face, or a fingerprint, or a social security number, is like a username, not
like a password.

Separately, simple facial recognition cameras can be fooled with printed
photographs. Will 3d printing in elastomers let us fool whatever
countermeasures are being developed against that?

Separately, we need to get started on building a society where we all are
comfortable and safe without privacy, because privacy is dying. Trying to save
it is like trying to provide subsidies for horse carriage manufacturers in the
age of the car.

~~~
woodman
> ...we need to get started on building a society...

Well the "comfortable" part of that makes it impossible, because of the whole
chilling effect thing surround private thoughts and activities necessary for
building a basic personality. The "safe" part is certainly doable though, but
fans of government prosecution will be disappointed. I don't care if the Girl
Scouts of America have a copy of my browser history, because they can't do
anything with it - but an agent of the state certainly can. Not because there
is anything presently illegal in the browser history, but the simple
combination of information + uncertainty + power = bad time for the lesser-
thans.

~~~
xapata
But if the Girl Scouts also have a copy, that could help protect you if a
state agent accuses you of something. The danger is a state monopoly on
information.

~~~
woodman
> The danger is a state monopoly on information.

While the monopoly makes the situation worse, what you are suggesting depends
on the state being subject to some form of universal justice - which isn't the
case. States pull that sort of crap all the time and rarely are there any
consequences for bald-faced lying to the public.

------
ekr
For someone not really familiar with the FB API, is it possible to get a list
of all people in a certain city, or are data mining techniques necessary?

~~~
axlee
It is possible:
[https://www.facebook.com/search/114952118516947/residents/pr...](https://www.facebook.com/search/114952118516947/residents/present)

~~~
imaginenore
Not really. Facebook rate-limits all requests. You would need a huge botnet to
collect hundreds of millions of photos.

------
jacquesm
Rorschach.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409459/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409459/)

~~~
aaronharder
...and Bob Arctor. [https://filmfork-
cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/content/scramble.gif](https://filmfork-
cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/content/scramble.gif)

------
vaadu
This is another reason why biometrics should never be used as a password.
UserID, maybe.

~~~
quickben
Yes, authentication != authorization. But it's more convenient to equate them
apparently.

------
strathmeyer
Well, I can put on sunglasses.

