German Art Activists Get Passport Using Digitally Altered Photo of Two Women Merged Together (vice.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Last month, an activist from the German art collective Peng! walked into her local government office in Berlin and applied for a new passport. "I probably have broken the law," the woman, a chemist living in the Western Saxony region, told Motherboard, "but our lawyers don't know which one." The woman applied for a passport using a photo of two separate people. Using specialized software created by Peng!, the collective merged the facial vectors from two different faces from two different images into one. Billie Hoffman (a pseudonym used by everyone in the Peng! Collective when talking to journalists), she told me how easy the whole process was: "Officials didn't mention fraud at any point." Hoffman's passport application was approved, and now she has an official German passport using the digitally altered photo. The photo is half her, half Federica Mogherini, an Italian politician who is the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. "The software calculated an authentic average of the faces and that's it," Hoffmann recalls.

Hoffman's passport is part of an artwork called "Mask ID," a campaign that's encouraging ordinary citizens to "flood government databases with misinformation" and disrupt mass surveillance programs. Ironically, the project is funded by the Bundeskulturstiftung, the German Federal cultural fund, part one was recently on show in Hamburg accompanied by a photo booth where anyone could upload their image and create their own distorted passport picture in an attempt to confuse government surveillance and circumnavigate facial recognition software. "Passports are tools of oppression" another member of the collective who declined to give me their real name told me.

Comments

Happy New Year, artsy ladies of Germany

[cascadingstylesheet]

It's literally all fun and games until someone literally gets hurt ... again ...

Border control will come to matter to you at some point, but it might be too late :(

Re:Happy New Year, artsy ladies of Germany

[110010001000]

If border control is a farce then why bother constructing tunnels to smuggle people in?

Re:Happy New Year, artsy ladies of Germany

[bluefoxlucid]

That's the problem: you go outside, dance around each night, and then when it rains 2 weeks later you claim your rain dance made it rain.

It's infeasible to monitor an entire border; and then people go under it anyway. Talk about terrorists, drug cartels, and other well-funded and heavily-organized threats goes hand-in-hand with apprehending poor women fleeing from a creditor who wants to gangrape them to death and sell their children into sex slavery while the well-funded insurgents bypass all your security.

We've done something. It did nothing, but we had to do something. Let's do it even more.

Re:Happy New Year, artsy ladies of Germany

[110010001000]

So you are claiming that border control does nothing, and the result would be exactly the same even if we got rid of all border controls across the world? Except for the tunnels of course, they would no longer be needed because people could freely walk across the border.

Re:Happy New Year, artsy ladies of Germany

[lgw]

Why did China build the Great Wall? It didn't 100% keep the Mongols out - the just climbed the wall. But their horses didn't, and it limited the amount of loot that could carry back with them after a raid.

Physical security, like digital security, isn't about "all or nothing". Making it harder makes it harder. It's harder to walk across a desert than to drive.

Meh, it's mostly symbolic anyway, and what people are actually arguing about is whether they like the symbolism. Why not just say "globalism is good; no borders" instead of pretending your objection is to the effectiveness of the wall?

Re:Happy New Year, artsy ladies of Germany

[Calydor]

No, the idea that passports are 'tools of oppression' is the problem.

easy enough to fix...

[phayes]

For passport applications performed in person - change the passport application process so that the picture is taken by the passport delivering authorities - Similar pictures are taken when entering many countries like the U.S. and every European passport already has the passport authorities taking fingerprints.

For mailed in passport renewal applications, make doctoring the picture cause for revocation, force people to pick up their passports in person and only deliver them if the picture is a close match to the applicant and apply a temporary ban on re-applying for a new passport when people attempting to subvert the process are detected.

What? This is overly burdensome? Well subverting the utility of passports by doctoring the pictures has a cost too and it seems to me that making sure that MY right to travel isn't being called into question by these idiots is worth some bother.

Re:Add drivers licenses, license plates, to that l

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what your driver's test looked like but mine had two phases.. The written part where I demonstrated I had basic knowledge of traffic laws and vehicle operations. Then the practical driving test where I demonstrated a number of basic skills, like staying in my line, making safe right and left turns, backing up while following the necessary traffic laws.

Driver's tests are designed to verify you have a minimum of proficiency, coordination, mental capacity and skill to handle a vehicle. Which sure sounds like a good idea to me because some folks just are not safe out there even with the tests. The purpose of the tests isn't to control you but to make sure you are capable.

Your complaint about taking ones driver's license doesn't wash with me. Usually this only involves situations where driving might be impaired, such as DWI convictions, seriously violating the traffic law; demonstrating a level or recklessness that makes you unsafe on the road and the like.