Fashion to thwart Facebook face recognition?

Creepy T-shirts designed to baffle Facebook facial-recognition software (Naked Security)

Image source: REALFACE web site

The garments - dubbed the "REALFACE Glamoflage" T-shirts - were designed by Simone C. Niquille as part of her* master’s thesis in graphic design at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam.

The shirts are custom-printed and sell for around $65.

The prints feature distorted faces of celebrity impersonators - Barack Obama, Michael Jackson and others - with the aim of creating an easy way to befuddle Facebook's pattern recognition algorithms...

I'm always fascinated by the responses of artists and designers to facial recognition technology.

CV Dazzle is my favorite because it is visually interesting; it really works as fashion and as an effective face rec counter-measure; and the approach stands a chance of keeping up as facial recognition technology continues to improve in surveillance applications.

REALFACE has simplicity and a more mainstream fashion statement going for it. In some percentage of attempts, it probably attracts the attention of the face-finding algorithms that are a part of automated facial recognition programs.

Full disclosure: I've never had a Facebook account so I'm making some assumptions about how it works.

Rather than a frontal attack on the face algorithm itself, it may be that best way to cause Facebook's face recognition trouble is by undermining the quality of the data it relies upon. Facebook relies upon users telling the software who is who, then applying facial recognition to prompt users to tag new photos. Users who wish to thwart Facebook's facial recognition might recognize that "garbage in; garbage out," depending on your point of view, is either a bug or a feature.

For other posts on biometrics and art click here.

Good face rec article at the BBC

Can disguises fool surveillance technology? (BBC)

putting a scarf over the mouth and nose, or simply wearing dark glasses could fool the system. However, this is beginning to change, says Shengcai Liao, an assistant professor at the Center for Biometrics and Security Research in Beijing, China. He says new techniques are being developed that can use information from the nose or mouth alone if the eyes are occluded, or from the eyes and eyebrows if a scarf is covering the lower part of the face. "It's not possible to recognize a fully occluded face, but we can currently recognize faces with 30% or even 50% occlusion," he said. "We have even had success performing recognition from a mouth alone - something that it would be very difficult for a human to do."

But what about other countermeasures, such as those used by McAfee, which included skin darkening, facial distortion and colouring his hair?

I'm still a fan of CV Dazzle. If you're going to change your appearance to "jam" facial recognition systems, you can make a bolder fashion statement than wearing a ski mask. Well, I guess Ski Mask is a pretty bold fashion statement, but click over to CV Dazzle for other options that don't scream "I just robbed a bank."

Howie Woo also has a more cheery alternative for those committed to the mask, but his approach has its own risks.

Surveillance, transparency, accountability & technology

TrapWire: Anonymous gives handy tips on how to avoid surveillance




This video has a heavy dose of dead pan humor, which is actually quite endearing.

As far as biometrics countermeasures go, I, like Anonymous, am still a fan of CV Dazzle because there's something stylish and fun about what how they go about the challenge of defeating facial recognition.

The infra-red LED trick is really cool, too. Fans of the show White Collar will have seen that hack come into play in last week's episode. That's the first place I saw it.

All of this, while fun, socially interesting and even romantic, ignores the fact that the smartphone is the holy grail of surveillance technologies. Someone can wear a mask and a crazy hair do, head cocked 20 degrees to the side under a LED hat all they want. It won't do any good if internet companies and cell providers (whether knowingly or unwittingly) cough up everything they know about individuals. The other virtue of the mobile computing surveillance model is that it requires no taxes, maintenance, or budget. The watched pay their own freight. That makes this type of surveillance available to individuals and organizations that might not have a lot of money or labor.

The answer isn't regulating private use of technologies such as cell phones or biometrics. With technology, blanket moratoriums and bans are almost never the answer and even more rarely succeed. It may not be romantic or fashionable but the only answer is transparency and accountability.

Technology is all about people. It always will be.

Background on TrapWire

How to Inoculate Against Public Facial Recognition

How to Defend Yourself Against Facial Recognition Technology (PBS)

Facial recognition technology [FRT] is now just about everywhere we are...

Do we simply have to accept this as inevitable, or are there things we can do to protect ourselves and others against improper or repressive use of FRT?

Below are some tactical and technological defenses against FRT. Specifically, two layers of those involve: 1) when we are being watched, for example, at protests or in a public space, and 2) when we ourselves are taking and sharing images of others, especially online.

This well sourced-article contains a wealth of information and links having to do with in person and online public facial recognition.

Of course, CV Dazzle gets plenty of attention, as it should.

The app that automatically pixelates the faces in pictures users take with their mobile phones is really cool, too.

Then there's the software in "Friends" a threat to your privacy? This facial recognition app might help, which isn't mentioned in the PBS piece, but it would fit right in.

Updated & Bumped: RNCOS Projects Biometrics CAGR of around 21% for 2012-2014

Global Facial Recognition Market to Witness Double Digit Growth (RNCOS Industry Research Solutions Press Release)

...Facial Recognition Technology has emerged as the fastest growing technology among the biometric technologies accepted worldwide and will continue to follow the same trend in future also by growing at a CAGR of around 31% during 2011-2013.

In other face-rec news:
New facial scanners at Heathrow to check the identity of millions (London Evening Standard)

UPDATE:

RNCOS projects growth of biometric market at a CAGR of around 21% during 2012-2014.

Readers who have reached this post through CV Dazzle may also find our post on Hyping Facial Recognition interesting. It describes the steps involved and the technical challenges associated with facial recognition surveillance deployments.

Burgeoning Facial Recognition: How come no pitchforks?

In the previous post, I linked an article about how facial recognition technology is really taking off.

M2SYS, made very subtle observation on the article:

In other words, "How come no pitchforks?"

He's right. New technology is often feared. In the case of biometrics, there have been those who have seen fit to feed that fear. Biometrics' association with security, and hence, authority would seem to put it right in the nexus between fear and fearmongering. Furthermore, the article's author chose examples of facial recognition applications that have gotten a lot of public attention and might be considered avant-garde to say the least. But so far, most public reaction seems to come somewhere between "cool" (Scene Tap), "that was dumb" (Facebook), or "about time" (London riots). Public comment has been rather moderate and even in tone. What gives?

I think there are several reasons why new facial recognition deployments are rarely met with scorn. Some are related to what it means deep-down to be human, and some are more practical.

♦ Except in a very narrow sense and among a very few cultures, a face is not, nor has it ever been, considered private. In the vast majority of times, places and cultures it has (like "name") always served as a proxy for an individual public identity. This fact is embedded in languages and useage all over the world. "He can't show his face around here anymore." "She really lost face." "They tried to save face."

♦ It's also probable that the vast majority of people intuitively understand the difference between privacy and anonymity. Privacy is the ability to keep things about yourself secret. Anonymity means "without a name". Privacy is a time-honored value that is nearly universal in city-building societies. Anonymity, freeing one from public scorn for one's non-private actions, has probably only been accessible to the masses in the relatively narrow space between the industrial revolution (that enabled rapid transit and the megalopolis) and the information age which seems to be making anonymity much harder.

♦ Marketers aren't stupid. When interractions aren't strictly voluntary, anonymity can act as a salve and biometrics can improve the efficacy and customer experience of marketing. Marketers know this and in a competitive marketplace the cost of mistakes is high. [After I've read it as well, and assuming the Phillip K. Dick story is similar to the movie, I'll write a detailed piece on how those who use Minority Report to say anything serious about biometrics profoundly misunderstand both Minority Report and biometrics. In the movie, the advertising posters were calling the name of John Anderton's eyeballs' former owner. Not only did this make the ads useless, it was also super-annoying to John Anderton. I would never go in a store where that happened and I doubt I'm alone.] The type of technology driving the variable ads is nothing like Minority Report. In fact, it's not really face recognition in the first place. It's really more demographic (in the marketing sense) recognition. It's non-individual (anonamous even) which is what makes demographics useful. And it's helpful. Even without biometrics, I see fewer ads for products I am not in the market for. Now if biometrics can just do something about all the perscription drug and trial lawyer commercials, I'm all for it.

♦ There have been no high-pofile victims of facial recognition gone awry — not that there won't be. It's easy to imagine that someone in a witness protection program or a high-value political defector might be tracked down and murdered in part using a facial recognition dragnet. Those people may want to swing by the CV Dazzle site for some face-rec-beating fashion tips. But it hasn't happened yet.

♦ Last (for now) but not least: After 9/11 there was a lot of overpromising an underdelivering about biometrics. A lot of money changed hands and a lot of people got egg on their faces. Still, they say "it's an ill wind that blows no good." The up-side of this bad history is that the public has had ten years to get used to the idea of what facial recognition applications are only just now begining to deliver. I think there's a sense among the public, at least on the security side, of: "I thought they were doing that already."

CV Dazzle: Public Anonymity through Fashion

Camouflage from Computer Vision (CVDazzle.com)

CV Dazzle is camouflage from computer vision (CV). It is a form of expressive interference that combines makeup and hair styling (or other modifications) with face-detection thwarting designs. The name is derived from a type of camouflage used during WWI, called Dazzle, which was used to break apart the gestalt-image of warships, making it hard to discern their directionality, size, and orientation. Likewise, the goal of CV Dazzle is to break apart the gestalt of a face, or object, and make it undetectable to computer vision algorithms, in particular face detection.

In response to the increasing popularity and dependability of facial recognition systems, there is an avant garde movement that seeks to join computer programmers, fashion designers, and stylists in an effort to maintain the option of public anonymity in a world of public facial recognition.

You have to admit, this

Photo: CVDazzle.com

 is a way more interesting way to thwart face rec than this.

Photo: Bank of America

Check out their site. There are a lot of cool images there — sort of  Lisbeth Salander meets nouveau punk — as well as some good information about face recognition.

But what happens to the future Dazzler who wants to use a multi-modal face and voice recognition ATM on the way to their face rec-accessible office?

Report: Face Rec Fastest-growing Biometric Modality

Global Facial Recognition Market to Witness Double Digit Growth (RNCOS Industry Research Solutions Press Release)

...Facial Recognition Technology has emerged as the fastest growing technology among the biometric technologies accepted worldwide and will continue to follow the same trend in future also by growing at a CAGR of around 31% during 2011-2013.

In other face-rec news:
New facial scanners at Heathrow to check the identity of millions (London Evening Standard)

UPDATE:

RNCOS projects growth of biometric market at a CAGR of around 21% during 2012-2014.

Readers who have reached this post through CV Dazzle may also find our post on Hyping Facial Recognition interesting. It describes the steps involved and the technical challenges associated with facial recognition surveillance deployments.