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Comment by imiric | Hacker News Reader

This is expected, yet still scary.

What are some easy / cheap / unobtrusive ways of thwarting face recognition software? I've read about masks, umbrellas and even makeup, but these are all obvious and difficult to use. Is there an inconspicuous solution that would only prevent face recognition without alerting human authorities? Would using these methods even be legal?

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The only way to thwart face recognition is the Hong Kong method: put a mask on and tear the cameras down.

Any clever technical solution you can think of will be swiftly declared illegal. Technology won't save you from government abuse.

Wearing a mask was also swiftly declared illegal in Hong Kong. (Currently off the books pending appeal, but you get the idea.)

Hiding your face is illegal in Belgium at least. This includes masks, helmets etc. I don't know the exact wording, but I would suspect that it's broad enough to include umbrellas and makeup and anything else that effectively makes it impossible to recognize a person.

Officially surveillance is illegal too. But that probably doesn't mean much anyway.

Sure, but the people doing the surveilling are also the people who will fine or arrest you for covering your face. Not sure I understand what you're trying to say?

Get peal off stickers of realistic eyes and put them on your cheeks and forehead. Simple and 100% effective to defeat ALL KNOWN FR ALGORITHMS. Lead developer of the #3 global FR product.

Until 3D cameras are used for FR

At the moment, huge cost issues. That won't always be the case, but it buys us time.

And when 3D cameras are available, enterprises with dozens to tens of thousands of conventional cameras will balk at the expense of upgrading their cameras and networks to handle them. We see this already with large companies that are still running non-digital non-streaming cameras.

What about wearing a hat that blasts infrared

A rapidly blinking LED on your hat causes cameras to compensate for the bright flash, but they can't compensate fast enough due to the blinking. This causes the camera's video stream compression to focus on the brightness, resulting in degraded information in the relatively dark face. Basically, the face becomes pixel garbage and it often is not recognized as a face at all.

I wonder if infrared LEDs (not seen by human eyes - but which desense camera sensisivity etc etc) flashed on/off at a high and rotatingly variable rate mich redcuce how effective these cams work? Of course, IR filters on cameras would occur soon enough?

Most cameras have a software IR filter, even the $17 elp IP cams.

There are haircuts that prevent face recognition.

Also you can wear a special headlight that renders CCTV cameras useless.

Are you referring to those infrared headlights? Those don't work. Quite the opposite, they only highlight your face.

I think he was referring to CV Dazzle [0].

[0] https://cvdazzle.com

interesting!

Yeah, CV Dazzle shows possible haircuts.

Here's a LED setup that works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=2y3HWR3NMDQ&...

https://xkcd.com/1105/

Thinking that haircuts will defeat facial recognition is cute but wrong. This is a political/legal problem and has to be solved by political means. Haircuts and LEDs just won't cut it. If anything, they will draw more attention to people.

I refer to LED lamps - similar to those joggers wear all the time.

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