How to camouflage yourself from facial recognition technology | Hacker News Reader

How to camouflage yourself from facial recognition technology

venturebeat.com

51 pointsjamesbritt20 comments

So all those cheesy sci-fi versions of the future, with crazy face paint, and asymmetrical haircuts and such was really just a brilliant prediction?

Interestingly humans continue to perceive all those examples as "faces with some paint on them." The software is confused, for now. Won't be that way forever.

There are several future inflection points for facial recognition software. First, three dimensional modelling, initially just based on stills (e.g. from a single stereo image pair or laser scan or such-like) but later able to process video and extract a facial model having some canonical expression, making matching easier. That alone is a bit scary once you combine it with the future utter ubiquity of massive processing power, imaging sensors, and communications. Second, a far more sophisticated facial/body recognition technology based on fundamental kinematics. You won't be able to fool such systems by wearing a disguise alone.

The question is, what will be enough? More than you'd need to fool an average person?

I don't know, but we can infer based on the capabilities of humans. It's at least possible to recognize someone from the way they walk and other characteristics, even after they've aged, put on or lost weight, etc. as people do that sort of thing all the time. Beyond that I don't know that the problem has been studied well enough to know the limits.

I just want the system that will do facial recognition based on whom I'm looking at, find them via social media, tell me their name and how I know them.

I suck so bad at remembering names and it so drastically impacts my ability to interact with others, that I think this could be life-changing for me.

Fwiw, I've started looking at the camera/glasses side of the equation; maybe someday soon! :)

I feel you! I have the same problem. I can't remember how many times someone walked up to me saying hello and I froze still cause I can't remember who he or she is..

Have you two tried tests like this? [1] The condition actually has a latin name. To bad it can't be fixed, but there are tons of tips for coping with it.. I'm the same. It's embarrassing sometimes, really, especially on these big meetings where I sometimes can't tell after talking to a few people whether I've talked to the next person already.. I'm glad their body language normally tells me.

[1] http://prosopagnosiaresearch.org/clinical-tests

I've also seen demo videos of people walking around with infrared LEDs strapped somewhere near their face - blinds the cameras.

Although, obviously, this is much more noticeable to whoever's watching the results.

Zoz, won the 2009 DEFCON badge-hacking challenge with something similar http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/hacking-the-defcon-...

Edit: Zoz, not Joe Grand

This article conflates facial detection and facial recognition, which is unfortunate.

I have no interest in avoiding facial detection, but avoiding facial recognition is interesting. I'd like to see more subtle forms of camouflage that aren't as obvious to humans but break the recognition algorithms.

I did not read it that way. The premise is more like facial detection is a prerequisite for facial recognition, so blocking the former will prevent the latter.

Quote from the article: You can see face-detection evading makeup below. The examples that have red squares around them were identified. But the ones that don’t have squares passed facial recognition software undetected

Based on that (and the image) one would think that detection and recognition are the same thing. Obviously they aren't - detection is trivial enough to do reliably in Javascript these days, while recognition is an area of active research.

The premise is more like facial detection is a prerequisite for facial recognition, so blocking the former will prevent the latter

This is true, but isn't what I desire. I'm happy for my face to be detected (eg, cameras use facial detection to take better photos), but I don't want the system to recognize me automatically.

Seen before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1482784 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1586740

Thanks; dupe detector did not trigger.

So Mike Tyson, the boxer, with his crazy facial tattoo, was just way ahead of facial recognition technology.

OTOH such unique pattern makes tracking much easier once face-detection system is trained for it.

A strategy for protestors is to change up or swap facial alterations. Even without facial recognition software, that makes it harder for cops to track people in a crowd over time.

This system seems explicitly designed to confuse the most common face detector, the Viola-Jones system, which is the basis for the face detection you can find in a lot of cameras these days. Note that detection (is there a face in the picture?) is a different task than recognition (whose face is it?). It will probably make face recognition harder as well, but so would wearing sunglasses, a beard or hair over your face.

Of course, there's a problem with this approach. Namely, I (and probably many others) don't want to be walking around with odd facepaint on all the time.

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