The only way to meaningfully defeat surveillance technology is to make a constitutional amendment that limits its use privately and publicly. We keep fighting it technologically which is an arms race. A cultural solution is the only path forward that will see meaningful success.
Shamelessly hijacking this story to recommend The Private Eye digital comic [0]. Set in a future where everyone has normalised the wearing of masks in public to preserve their anonymity. The protagonist refuses to get a driving license because he wouldn't want a photo of himself in a database.
Not surprising at all. It's a form of dazzle camouflage that has previously been shown to confuse facial recognition[0]. It's probably possible to design it to be more effective yet less intrusive than juggalo makeup.
I would have actually expected it to be more popular by now.
In Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson one of the characters happens by a group of young women wearing devices that project constantly changing colored light patterns onto their faces to prevent facial recognition tracking. It's barely even mentioned in the book but I wondered how viable that was of an idea. The character's only thought on the devices IIRC was that most people only occasionally wore them.
In 2018 it was already common knowledge that gait analysis was more accurate than facial recognition at the time. This would have been defeatable then.
It would be interesting to first create a taxonomy of juggalo face paint patterns a la aruco markers/April tags, then see if a sufficiently large crowd of juggalos could be used to calibrate cameras
I'll make sure to wear my Juggalo makeup the next time I visit China to avoid their face scanning technology. That'll surely help me blend into the background.
So maybe they may be smarter then they get credited for being. Probably not. But now anyone feeling uncomfortable about facial recognition tech now know what they can do to combat it if they chose. One question. Can you get thru the airport and onto a plan wearing the makeup?
I’m more curious about how robust this is against modern systems.
A lot of newer facial recognition models are trained on occlusions, masks, and heavy makeup — so this might be less effective than people assume.
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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Eye
I would have actually expected it to be more popular by now.
[0] https://adam.harvey.studio/cvdazzle/
Need to disappear? Just go to the Gathering and find your new family. Pay for protection with Faygo.
I focused on facebook’s detector (not recognizer) for reasons explained in the intro, but face rec has come a long way since then.