Avoiding Facial Recognition of the Future 258
hypnosec writes "A New York-based designer has created a camouflage technique that makes it much harder for computer based facial recognition. Along with the growth of closed circuit television (CCTV) , this has become quite a concern for many around the world, especially in the UK where being on camera is simply a part of city life. Being recognized automatically by computer is something that hearkens back to 1984 or A Scanner Darkly. As we move further into the 21st century, this futuristic techno-horror fiction is seeming more and more accurate. Never fear though people, CV Dazzle has some styling and makeup ideas that will make you invisible to facial recognition cameras. Why the 'fabulous' name? It comes from World War I warship paint that used stark geometric patterning to help break up the obvious outline of the vessel. Apparently it all began as a thesis at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. It addressed the problems with traditional techniques of hiding the face, like masks and sunglasses and looked into more socially and legally acceptable ways of styling that could prevent a computer from recognizing your face. Fans of Assassin's Creed might feel a bit at home with this, as it's all about hiding in plain sight."
Reality catching up to comics (Score:4, Interesting)
V for Vendetta and Doktor Sleepless are pioneers of this. Doktor Sleepless's masks carry the added bonus of jamming all RFID tags in a limited area, letting the wearer act free.
First Step - address the visual DB (Score:5, Interesting)
The first step would be to stop making this easier for the government by posting and correctly tagging all those Facebook and flicker, etc, photos.
In fact, if you really want to start messing with this, get photo manipulation software, and on an entire sequence of photos stretch the nose a little, reduce the space between the nose and mouth, lengthen the chin, change the eyes a little, essentially changing all the standard measurements useful for visual identification, then "poison the well" by continuously posting these slightly altered shots up on these tracking sites and tag them appropriately. I'd personally even round robin tag them with friends names, or random ones if you don't already have a history to overcome, just to confuse the matter even more. (What, you didn't think that those pictures and info weren't available to the government, did you? They're the biggest, and free!, ID DB ever constructed)
All the other stuff, wrap around mirrored glasses that are IR/UV opaque etc will only assist in keeping them from making an easy match.
baseball caps and hoodies (Score:4, Interesting)
Render CCTV pretty much 100% ineffective.
Or maybe it was just ineffective anyway.
Re:We need a new fashion (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been wanting to surround my license plate holder on my car with these IR LEDs....and see if they'd blank out my plate to the stupid speed/traffic light cameras....
Re:We need a new fashion (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe veils will become popular again.
Re:Don't forget IR (Score:5, Interesting)
As I understand it, eyes alone aren't very helpful for facial recognition; the system also needs to see the nose and some other features to determine the dimensions of various points on your face and make a match. Notice the article talks about how effective it is to cover the bridge of the nose, as that's a critical area.
The Ugly T-Shirt (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds like the Ugly T-Shirt from William Gibson's _Zero History_.
Re:We need a new fashion (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe veils will become popular again.
Long before current discussions on veils became actual, Italy already passed laws to counter that. I's illegal in Italy to walk the streets unrecognisable. Wouldn't be surprised if subtle camouflage techniques all of a sudden would fall into the same category and hence would be illegal too over there. I guess we have to thank Mussolini for this.
Long before the event of Internet, registers were conceived whereby communications and stays could be documented. I once had to register for Internet access using one of these. The revision of the register I used dated 1937. I take it never changed since. Again one of the gems of Mussolini.