Makeup Patterns to hide from face detection
Adam Harvey is investigating responses to the growing ubiquity of surveillance cameras with facial recognition capabilities.
He writes:
My thesis at ITP, is to research and develop privacy enhancing counter technology. The aim of my thesis is not to aid criminals, but since artists sometimes look like criminals and vice versa, it is important to protect individual privacy for everyone.
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What will these forms look like and how well will they integrate into our cultural expectations of body decoration while still being able to function as face detection blocking devices? How can hats, sunglasses, makeup, earrings, necklaces or other accessories be modified to become functional and decorative? These are the topics that I’ll be exploring in thesis on CV Dazzle.
Very interesting stuff in Adam Harvey’s CV Dazzle Makeup blog posts. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.
I doubt it. I suspect that the facial recognition abilities of computers will improve to the point that these sorts of masks have a harder and harder time obscuring identity. When combined with other channels of information (gait analysis, social network analysis w.r.t. who you’re with, etc.), I expect that it will be hard to regain the kind of privacy in which you aren’t seen in public by X because X wasn’t personally standing around to see you there. Computers and cameras and such make it cheap for every X to have access to many, many surrogates who will watch everywhere for people of interest.