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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsHow to Thwart Facial Recognition
How to Thwart Facial Recognition
By Malia Wollan
July 30, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/magazine/how-to-thwart-facial-recognition.html
Why not give the camera what it wants, which is a face? says Leonardo Selvaggio, an interdisciplinary artist. Just dont give it your face. To enable people to obfuscate facial-recognition software programs, Selvaggio, who is 34 and white, made available 3-D, photo-realistic prosthetic masks of his own face to anyone who wants one. He tested the masks by asking people connected to him on Facebook to upload pictures of themselves in the prosthetic: It didnt matter if they were skinny women or barrel-chested men; short or tall; black, brown, Asian or white the social networks facial-recognition software recognized them as Selvaggio. Theres nothing more invisible to surveillance and security technology than a white man, he says.
Selvaggio thought up the project, which he calls URME Surveillance, when he was living in Chicago, where law-enforcement officials have access to more than 30,000 interlinked video cameras across the city. He wanted to start conversations about surveillance and what technology does with our identity. He knew that researchers have found that facial-recognition software exhibits racial biases. The programs are often best at identifying white and male faces, because they have been trained on data sets that include disproportionate numbers of them, and particularly bad at identifying black faces. In law-enforcement contexts, these errors can potentially implicate people in crimes they didnt commit.
Selvaggio sees two routes to elude facial-recognition programs. The first is to disappear: go offline and off the grid. Selvaggio prefers the second option, which is to flood the system with weird, incongruous data. Wear someone elses likeness or lend out your own. (Before donning a prosthetic mask, check to see whether your city or state has anti-mask laws, which may make wearing one illegal.) Even without a mask, though, you can confuse some facial-recognition programs by obscuring parts of your face with makeup, costuming, hairdos and infrared light. Artificial-intelligence programs look for elliptical, symmetrical faces, so obscure an eye, cover the bridge of your nose, wear something that makes your head look unheadlike. They have all of our information, Selvaggio says. So then lets make more information that isnt even true, and then lets make more information on top of that.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)dealing with beards, bangs and lipstick, there are basic shapes, like eyes and noses, they must recognize.
So, could they be fooled by temporary noses, chins, and Vulcan ears? Eyes are tough without surgery, but some sort of quick fix to eyelids and eyeballs should be possible by a good costume artist.
marble falls
(56,371 posts)VarryOn
(2,343 posts)Upon coming into the country. Apply the hell out of it at airports and at the border. But, inside the country it should be illegal.
My comings and goings and traveling about should be no one's business.
We are being too lacks about protecting our privacy.
Glorfindel
(9,706 posts)Catchy turn of phrase, that.
VarryOn
(2,343 posts)As I was typing it, I mentally debated with myself whether it was "lax" or "lacks." I paused but then was TOO lazy to look it up. Not only did I use the wrong word, but I misuse "to."
marble falls
(56,371 posts)VarryOn
(2,343 posts)I'd hope facial recognition would aid our customs and border folks with pointing them out for extra scrutiny. Now, I suspect we dont have ID data on a lot of the bad folks, but for the ones in which we do who are non-Americans, I'm ok with them being hassled.
I'm totally concerned about abise inside the country. Not so much at the border or at border control locations like airports.
DemocracyMouse
(2,275 posts)Until we the people can have full access to ALL police and government phone calls, credit card data and metadata, the system is guaranteed to amalgamate power into a police state.
Democracy first. Democracy forever.