
Show HN: Cover Faces from Protest Photos - aliabd
https://www.gradio.app/hub/hub-blm
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Yetanfou
It would be even better if the tool could make a difference between legitimate
protesters and those who are there to riot, loot, pillage and burn since I see
no reason to mask their faces.

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verdverm
Interesting but difficult. What would one do about the rioters wearing "press"
on their clothes?

Seems double edged considering the murder / suicide we saw this week in
Kenosha

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Yetanfou
For human observers it is rather easy to separate the rioters from protesters
when observing video streams. On still images this is much harder unless the
image happens to catch a rioter in the act of slinging a Molotov cocktail or
swinging a 2x4 at a shopkeeper. A combination of facial recognition and a
model which has been trained to recognise rioting and rioters might get you a
long way.

...like they're doing in China, except that they're looking for dissenters
instead of rioters...

...which is not exactly an endorsement.

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burfog
It's not easy. The protester seen from the front in one video could also be a
murderer seen from the back in a different video.

Harmless protesters are safe in the USA. They don't need to be covered up.
Covering them is effectively an acknowledgement that they are not in fact
peaceful.

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Yetanfou
Well, yes, in the USA this is probably the case. The world is a lot bigger
than the USA and encompasses a multitude of countries where protesting is best
done anonymously. The 'black block' tactics by the likes of AFA/Antifa are
another story, these are people who go out with the intention to harm those
who they consider to be their opponents, i.e. the opposite of the term
'peaceful protests' which is bandied around so much. They are the ones I'd
like to unmask or at least not have masked by any software made to protect the
privacy of real protesters.

On the subject of that protester from one video being a murderer on another,
not really. If you only have a single source this problem exists and is
unavoidable, so much is clear. When you have multiple sources from different
angles it becomes possible to correlate the person seen from the back in
source A with the murderer in source B and with that identify that person in
source A as the murderer.

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burfog
In one photo, showing a murder, the murderer is seen from the back. (as
happened recently in Portland)

In another photo, he is seen from the front, somewhat peacefully protesting.
(his daughter was in the vicinity and held a weapon that he could have used)

If the face had been hidden in the protest photo, then that photo would not be
useful for solving the murder.

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rjeli
nice. I made something similar a few weeks back at
[http://deafmute.me](http://deafmute.me). It’s a web app that accesses your
camera and covers up faces with tfjs, and you can record video by screen
recording. tfjs is pretty demanding though, so it’s pretty low FPS on older
phones, and I never got around to writing a Kalman filter so that flickers
wouldnt expose faces for a few frames.

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aliabd
Just checked it out! Looks good :) Yeah, tfjs is pretty heavy on the browser,
but at least you don't need to process on a server. Try using
[https://gradio.app](https://gradio.app) if you want to keep processing on a
server/your own hardware.

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aliabd
I used Gradio[1] to create and host this interface. Original model[2]
developed by Stanford ML Group and LSC-CNN[3].

[1]: [https://github.com/gradio-app/gradio](https://github.com/gradio-
app/gradio) [2]:
[https://github.com/stanfordmlgroup/blm](https://github.com/stanfordmlgroup/blm)
[3]: [https://github.com/vlad3996/lsc-cnn](https://github.com/vlad3996/lsc-
cnn)

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noeltock
Well done! Feels like it's missing the larger opportunity to protect other
protests globally (by using a more generic/pixelated cover).

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aliabd
Thanks! Absolutely, maybe I'll add the ability to choose or upload an
emoji/cover?

