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'Privacy Visor' Can Fool Face-Recognition Cameras
itwbennett writes: Dark shades aren't enough to go incognito in the age of face recognition camera systems. For that you need the Privacy Visor developed at Japan's National Institute of Informatics. The visor consists of a lightweight, wraparound, semitransparent plastic sheet fitted over eyewear frames. It works by reflecting overhead light into the camera lens, causing the area around the eyes to appear much brighter than normal.
These glasses seem kind of pointless in that from what the article says, they pretty much have to be that big in order to actually work - the earlier model by the same company was even bigger. With something like this, the goal should be to make them as surreptitious as possible so that the person wearing them doesn't stand out in a crowd and thus draw attention from whatever security organization is likely monitoring the cameras. $250 (at current exchange rates anyway) is also far too high of a price tag for a pair of what are basically glorified sunglasses.
Now, if they looked like normal sunglasses (or better yet could be built into prescription glasses) and were under $100, I could see myself getting a pair of these if I planned to be in an area with heavy CCTV usage.
If a human being can recognize someone with such visor on, it's only a matter of time before someone can translate this process into an algorithm.
Let's see them cover these.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Too big, too ugly, ain't nobody gonna wear those, ever.
Thirty thousand yen - roughly $250-$300.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Within the week, a new update will allow
a) recognition of people wearing the "Privacy Visor"
b) selling their name to people advertizing privacy products
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How about they just look for the one wearing the gigantic white freaky sunglasses? I'd say just wear a ski mask. It's slightly less conspicuous than those glasses.
The visor makes you look like a weirdo and complete psycho thus clearing a space around as people attempt to avoid proximity with you.
Is this is what the wearer sees?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Still more expensive then a plain niqab
And if that is not manly enough, you can wear shemagh over your face with sunglass.
I'd sooner walk around in a hockey mask while giggling.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
... this will last only until the facial recognition algorithm is trained to ignore it. If it won't fool a human, it won't fool an algorithm for long. Better fixes are ones that exploit the weaknesses of the sensors rather than attacking the algorithm. The other example, cited right in TFA, uses a more effective long term strategy of hampering the sensors.
Upgrading the algorithm? Cheap, and only needs to be done once. Upgrading every sensor to filter IR? Not impossible, but much more expensive and thus likely to be skipped by businesses.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
or you could just wear a bag over your head
Given the weak, wimpy politically correct crowd, they'll be legal to wear in the near future.
...I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
Completely screws most imgane recognition and plenty of humans too for a while. Look how long Karadzic managed to hide in plain sight just by having one.
Ok, this plan won't work for women (unless they're greek) but for us guys - seems like a winner!
electronic photosensors are vulnerable to IR, which can temporarily or permanently blind the camera depending on wavelength and intensity and the quality of the filters used in the camera. IRLEDs can be small enough to mount on the cloth surface of a baseball cap and powered with button cells charged by solar cells which seat to form. The hardware can be had for change out of five Dollars. Baseball caps aren't illegal (yet), and obfuscating your features for electronic identification is a protected right (unless you can show me the law which dictates otherwise - I am aware of none in the UK or the US which abrogates the right to roam free from unlawful interference). The big plus is that you can wear the emitter all day long and nobody can say anything because it's practically invisible. They'd have to know what they're looking for and they'd have to show you the law which says you can't put an invisible radiator in a hat.
BTW, I wear a fedora when I go out, whether it has radiators in it I will not confirm or deny, and the only time I have ever been asked to remove it was when I was entering the Palace at Westminster and I told the Rentacop in no uncertain terms that the cover was staying on until I was in the office of the Minister I was there to see. The hat stayed on.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
The terrorists have been doing this for ages
Wake up BoRegardless! Burqa's are already banned in may countries because cameras cant identify you etc.
For more, see http://www.news.com.au/national/burqa-bans-already-in-place-in-many-countries/story-fncynjr2-1227078762996
I think a fencing mask is cheaper and it will keep the rubber bullets out to boot.
It appears to reflect overhead light by virtue of being white and slightly angled - wow, science. I guess albinos won't be too concerned about this technology.
"A 2012 version, powered by a lithium-ion battery, included LED lights around the nose that shined near-infrared light toward cameras. Computer-vision systems were also fooled by the bright light, but the visor looked dorky and required a bulky power source."
So the new one is the same, just no leds or power source. Dorkiness has been maintained...
All this so the cameras don't think you have a face. They still record you, and can tell you are a person by the way you move. And since you will be the only douchedork wearing these around, you should be easy to find.
You could always just stick a couple of bright IR LEDs on normal glasses or a hat and achieve the same or better effect. They have the added bonus of having their existence be invisible to the naked eye, so nobody in person knows you're even messing with the CCTVs. Even more importantly, you don't have to wear some bizarre oversize glasses that would look out of place anywhere except a scifi convention.
the price will go down fast as soon as China start making them.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I hope that I am not forced to wear a burka just to keep some small amount of personal privacy, once big data is able to tap into nearly every single survailence camera, and use face recognition to automatically track everything I do, even with my mobile phone at home or turned off.
Western society is be becoming more and more Orwellian.
In the old days, people would fight and die for freedom and liberties. But now societies are willing to sacrifice these to prevent one person from being harmed from terrorists even though the odds are insignigant compared to other threats we accept such as traffic accidents, or having one child from being molisted even though this is nearly always done by someone close or known to the child.
Maybe if the started with a pair of mirrored aviators and paired that with an Near IR LED at the outer edges they could come up with something that wouldn't look so strange.
Simply wear your baseball cap front side back. It has fooled thousands of batters into thinking the fielder is looking oneway while the fielder was in fact looking the otherway. Computer vision recognition systems would be stumped by a face with no eyes, no mouth, no nose but lots of hair! I am a genius. Where do I collect my brownie points?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Wearing a pair of Rayban Aviator Mirror sunglasses is way cooler and reflects a lot of light too.
Just think how much tin foil you could buy for that money. You could have a different hat for each day of the year.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
The only place where "facial recognition cameras" are common are places where you are requested to remove sunglasses, hats, etc anyway. The "let's enhance it and run it through the facial recognition software" seen on tv is utter crap. Until people start using higher resolution "security" cameras this will just be an expensive and stupid looking gimmick that will, as others have said, be easily overcome with a few software tweaks. Why are people worried about this?
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
About 40 years ago, the joke would have been "the price will go down fast as soon as Japan starts making them." Fast-forward to 2015 and the product is from Japan.
I wonder what the joke will be in the next 10~20 years. Maybe "the price will go down fast as soon as Africa starts making them."
gevulot in Quantum Thief
"A 2012 version, powered by a lithium-ion battery, included LED lights around the nose that shined near-infrared light toward cameras. Computer-vision systems were also fooled by the bright light, but the visor looked dorky and required a bulky power source."
Yup, not dorky looking. Check.
It was in a movie on Netflix a couple of years ago.
I prefer this: http://michelleshaeffer.com/wp...
...
"Order your face recognition-stopping privacy visor online! Now with optional custom artwork printed on the front! Have a family photo, or child's artwork custom-printed for just $19.95 additional. Get yours today!"
Or
"Ok, here comes unknown #2, 'mustard stain lower left side' ."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
My voice^Wface is my passport. Verify Me.
We're all scott/tiger now! except Nicolas Cage or John Travolta.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
a Ball cap.
http://www.solarguard.com/pep2...
30-40 years after that, it willl be the price will go down once the US starts making them...
Couldnt I just make a similiar thing out of tinfoil? Tinfoil reflects nicely. Attach it to some cheap sunglass frame and poke pinholes in it with a small sewing needle.
The United States of America will still exist in 30-40 years?
Did you perhaps mean instead the New Confederate States of America? The Republic of Texas? The Free Republic of Idaho? Mexarkana? Absaroka? The Jefferson Freehold? New Deseret? The Republic of Sequoyah?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The United States of America will still exist in 30-40 years?
Did you perhaps mean instead the New Confederate States of America? The Republic of Texas? The Free Republic of Idaho? Mexarkana? Absaroka? The Jefferson Freehold? New Deseret? The Republic of Sequoyah?
Nope... Canada... Canada will be the richest country in the world due to it's fresh water reserves and will buy up the US for pennies on the Loonie... (grin)
only the criminals will own visors! (or hats or scrves or really outsize sun glasses!)
Here's how it works... No self-respecting algorithm is ever going to admit recognizing someone wearing glasses like those.
and let windows 10 rape me, west texas style.
A Yen is a penny, and a penny is a yen.. If ya plan on spending any, ya better know it then...
Facial recognition software is just the start, and the real nailer is what they're working on, now, in secret labs at (I think) Bell. That's *full body* recognition software. Doesn't matter if you gain or lose weight, it uses "MoRe" to track you (Motion Recognition) plus facial recog, and height and audio captures for voice quality and speech patterns and grammar, and if it's a full time tracker it can even keep a record of your keystrokes to see how many errors you make and which kind, and much much more (Why it's called "MORE" in all capitols MoRe is just a subset). This is run once for entry into a data base, and then , if, say, we need to ID an agent from a video, we can with 100% certainty ascertain if it is a duplicate, someone else entirely, or our own people. I have no doubt that unscrupulous governments would want to use this to control a population, but that's for society to fight. Once they're aware of it's existence.. So this.