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Comment by cheschire | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if they give a class in juggalo paint at the farm, and other means of bypassing facial recognition programs. The tenure of a field operative these days must be incredibly short

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The former Chief of Disguise for the CIA did an AMA relatively recently. Pretty candid and fascinating stuff.

For the curious: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/a32j7e/im_jonna_mende...

Her videos for Wired are pretty fun as well. My family watched them together and found them fascinating.

Shortly afterward, I was in DC with my family on vacation, and we went through the international spy museum (which is a lot of fun). When we got to the gift shop, we found out she’d been there not even an hour before signing copies of her book. I was bummed, to say the least.

They've certainly gone to similar lengths in the past: see https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/meet-the-cias-disguise-art..., for instance.

Facial recognition countermeasures can be considered in some ways obsolete in an era of stance and gait recognition.

At last the Ministry of Silly Walks shows its value to the wider bureaucracy.

Elastic band and a small sharp pebble strategically placed in your shoe take care of that.

How resilient is facial recognition to good old fashioned spectacles with optionally attached plastic {nose, eyebrows, moustache}?

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51WNRdX9cxL...

There’s 2^3 + 1 disguises / operations right there for ya!

2^4 + 1 if you {,don’t} include a beard hung off your ears.

Interesting point. One could assume that having full access to both the intricacies of the system and the ability to purge/hide people from it would help domestically, but what about international spies? Juggalo paint to fool facial recognition in Texas is one thing, but may backfire in Shenzhen..

They just walk around in Batman getup.

Why do you think the international wholesale market for cosplay is located there?

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