The only way to meaningfully defeat surveillance technology is to make a constitutional amendment that limits its use privately and publicly. We keep fighting it technologically which is an arms race. A cultural solution is the only path forward that will see meaningful success.
> <i>The only way to meaningfully defeat surveillance technology is to make a constitutional amendment that limits its use privately and publicly</i><p>So, contextually, a constitutional amendment to force private and public use of Juggalo Makeup?<p>It’s extreme, but bold change requires bold steps.
People find their ring cameras too useful, businesses love cloud based security camera systems, facial recognition and cloud backup are expected features of every phone's photo app, courts consider recording integral to first amendment expression.<p>These are some big rocks you'll need to move, otherwise your amendment won't be worth the paper it's written on. Just saying "you can collect all the data, but don't use it for surveillance" doesn't mean much.<p>I have no solutions, feels like we missed the boat if there ever was an opportunity to prevent it in the first place. We live in public now.
Just this week I've been taking walks in my neighborhood, and the number of homes that chime or play a voice recording to indicate being recorded was shocking. I just indicate to them that I think they are number 1. In other situations where I'm in public with a camera cleary pointed in my direction I tend to do that with my hand in front of my face. If they are going to blur out the #1 sign, my face gets conveniently blurred as well. They might have a right to record, but I also have a right to silently express my opinion as well.
> they are number 1<p>Maybe I’m daft but what does this mean?
When you're walking around with your finger over your face all day, you should extend your thumb as well, so everyone can tell you're a Legend.
Not sure if I agree that the only solution is to give up now; we need sensible people that know how the technology works in power and that are not beholden to serve big corporations, but rather the average person. We need less populist and long-drawn campaigns. We need less politicizing. And we need all of that yesterday.
><i>People find their ring cameras too useful, businesses love cloud based security camera systems, facial recognition and cloud backup are expected features of every phone's photo app, courts consider recording integral to first amendment expression.</i><p>As long as the recordings aren't centrally stored and sold in bulk, and sold to brokers and governments, that would still be ok.
You can have a ring camera- “just”make it illegal to share/sell the data from it. Have it be an audit item.
I don't think "courts consider recording integral to first amendment expression" is fully correct.<p>Otherwise there could not be states with two-party/all-party consent requirements for making an recording.<p>I think requiring all-party consent for facial recognition would not have 1st amendment issues.<p>Implementation details and effectiveness are, of course, very different issues.
I don’t think it will happen for at least a couple of reasons. The “deep state” in the US and elsewhere will not allow it and would find workarounds ala five eyes. And two, the right wants to spy on the left and the left wants to spy on the right. Only a small sliver of libertarians are strongly against spying “the domestic baddies.” So there is no chance.
As long as it is accessible and useful, it will be used. Organized crime is around despite it being illegal. Considering how lucrative tracking people is, people will do it illegally. Even corporations as long as penalties aren't significant enough. We really need a three strikes law for corporations. Three egregious intentional violations and corp, is dissolved all assets going to support the needy.
"things should be legal because some people will do it anyways" is not a very compelling argument. I'm sure I don't need to explain to you why extrapolating this line of though to, for example, murder is silly and not worth taking serious.
Love the last bit. Lack of accountability for corporations is a problem. That plus stiff penalties for executives or individuals using facial recognition without consent should put a stop to it pretty quickly.
Shamelessly hijacking this story to recommend The Private Eye digital comic [0]. Set in a future where everyone has normalised the wearing of masks in public to preserve their anonymity. The protagonist refuses to get a driving license because he wouldn't want a photo of himself in a database.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Eye" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Eye</a>
Thanks for that! Vaughan is great. It's funny that it's a digital release considering the topic. That small sense of unease I feel each time I feed my personal and credit card data into yet another website should only enhance the experience.
Slightly bad example as it seems the company did "one of the first DRM-free, pay what you want comics", going to the website you can enter 0 and download without giving any other details (besides everything else you leak on the web): <a href="http://panelsyndicate.com/comics/tpeye" rel="nofollow">http://panelsyndicate.com/comics/tpeye</a>
Ever since Covid, people are obscuring their faces in public more often. I especially see gig workers wearing balaclavas. Partially for sun and wind protection, but potentially for anonymity
I would also add the Netflix movie "Anon" which came out in 2018:<p><i>In the near future, humanity lives in a technologically advanced, dystopian society. The government requires that everyone receive an ocular implant that records everything they see. The implant provides an augmented-reality head-up display to the user with information about anyone and anything they may see, as well as recording the user's view. Investigations into crimes amount to detectives reviewing video and assessing whether an alleged perpetrator is innocent or guilty.</i><p><i>Sal Friedland, a detective with the metropolitan police force, crosses paths with a young woman who appears to trigger a glitch in his ocular implant, as no data about her is retrieved. When he reviews his own record of that day, he finds that every single frame of her has been mysteriously deleted. At work, Sal is handed several homicide cases where the victims' own visual records of their deaths are replaced with the killer's point of view, thus hiding the killer's identity. At another murder scene, Sal chases the apparent killer only to nearly be killed when they hack his implant and change what he sees in real time.</i>
You got any other comics to recommend in this style/genre? Cyberpunk, dystopia, etc
> refuses to get a driving license because he wouldn't want a photo of himself in a database.<p>I refuse to get a "RealID" for nearly the same reasons.
Whoop! Whoop!<p>Need to disappear? Just go to the Gathering and find your new family. Pay for protection with Faygo.
Hey I wrote a paper about this exactly ten years ago! <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04504" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04504</a><p>I focused on facebook’s detector (not recognizer) for reasons explained in the intro, but face rec has come a long way since then.
I was hoping my corpse paint would also be effective at blocking facial recognition too.
Not surprising at all. It's a form of dazzle camouflage that has previously been shown to confuse facial recognition[0]. It's probably possible to design it to be more effective yet less intrusive than juggalo makeup.<p>I would have actually expected it to be more popular by now.<p>[0] <a href="https://adam.harvey.studio/cvdazzle/" rel="nofollow">https://adam.harvey.studio/cvdazzle/</a>
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Isn't being non-white good enough to not be identified as you? Sure, you might get identified as someone else altogether, but that's moving the goal posts from just not being identified. /s
Did I accidentally sleep in a time machine? Front page of HN right now has articles on Juggalos and Afroman.
The Millennials are getting nostalgic
It's so funny when a member of the younger generation comments. Younger generations are always trying to kill off the older generations. Both physically and metaphorically, too!<p>It makes sense in a way. If you were actually successful in doing that, you could finally make the world in your image instead of having to work around all those pesky "legacy" viewpoints that hold back the True Progress of the Younger Generation. But alas, the older generation still exists, because the younger can't do it.<p>But do continue with the passive aggressive comments. While it keeps me spry, you still get paid entry-level wages when you should be kings.
They're getting old, and with that enough of them are getting rich. And that makes them worth pandering to so they can be parted from their money. See for example all the commercials that feature 90s crap and political talking points intended to appeal to them.
On a side note, sleep is indistinguishable from time travel.
The early 2000s are back baby
I wonder if I'm more likely to get denied entry wearing juggalo face or classic camo paint
Depends. Are you attending an ICP concert, or a military reenactment convention, or something else entirely?
You would want to test the camo. I suspect there is more than just changing ones appearance. I believe I've seen a story talking about not needing to see the entire face. You can still id people wearing neck gaiters and other face coverings if you can make out the facial contour. I think you needed about a third of the face uncovered. <a href="https://hyperverge.co/blog/masked-face-recognition/" rel="nofollow">https://hyperverge.co/blog/masked-face-recognition/</a><p>Edit found a link pretty fast.
I wonder if kawaii face paint would work
In 2018 it was already common knowledge that gait analysis was more accurate than facial recognition at the time. This would have been defeatable then.
Gait recognition is also easier to defeat. All you need is to put something like a few pebbles or coins in one of your shoes
I think dazzle camouflage is best understood as having limited scope of application as pertains to face recognition. It shouldn't be regarded as failing within its intended scope on account of gait analysis. Everyone knows you have to learn the juggalo dance moves to go along with the face paint.
How are everyone's gaits being collected? Is there gait databases at the NSA? Not being skeptical! Honestly very interesting.
DARPA projects from more than a decade ago (VSAM/WAMI for arial platforms like Gorgon Stare) used arial imagery to capture ground shadows for gait tracking purposes.<p>From chatting with some of the researchers many years ago my understanding is that it usually wasn't accurate enough for unique identification and the gait shadow was dependent on shoe type and clothing, so a persistent gait shadow database wouldn't have been useful. But it could be correlated with ground-based surveillance for identification, for example person A and B were identified on a ground-based security camera entering a building, then gait tracking could be used to monitor where they went after they left the building even if they avoided ground-based security cameras after that point.
Most people carry an accelerometer-equipped smartphone around in their pocket or bag, and there is already precedent for that data being collected and transmitted without consent: <a href="https://research.google/blog/android-earthquake-alerts-a-global-system-for-early-warning/" rel="nofollow">https://research.google/blog/android-earthquake-alerts-a-glo...</a>
We only have discussions of the Chinese rolling out gait tracking widely. Basically you use existing facial databases to match ids to people in observed areas and capture their gait as they pass observed areas. Then it goes into the database. Using partial matching (non ideal observation of gait or face) allows for greater positive matching in non-ideal circumstances.
You could compare gaits between footage of a crime and footage of you in another public place, probably?<p>I don't think I've heard of it being used though.
I guess LiveNation won't be running ICP concerts, then...
Miracles all around us
Here's the thing about "fucking magnets; how do they work?" How do magnets work? No less a science communicator than Richard Feynman—he of the rubber sheet gravity spacetime analogy—had no analogy to communicate why ferromagnetism creates attraction and repulsion. Here's his incredibly shaggy dog non-answer to the question about how magnets work wherein he says that there are no pat answers to "why" questions. He gets to the money line: "I cannot explain that attraction in terms of anything else that's familiar to you" <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8</a><p>So I will defend that line in the song. I will only accept answers from people who can explain why ferromagnetism works to me assuming I know how electromagnets create magnetic fields.
You could throw on the SNL skit or the real video and frankly I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference
It would be interesting to first create a taxonomy of juggalo face paint patterns a la aruco markers/April tags, then see if a sufficiently large crowd of juggalos could be used to calibrate cameras
In Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson one of the characters happens by a group of young women wearing devices that project constantly changing colored light patterns onto their faces to prevent facial recognition tracking. It's barely even mentioned in the book but I wondered how viable that was of an idea. The character's only thought on the devices IIRC was that most people only occasionally wore them.
As with most things cyberpunk, Gibson also did this masterfully w/ the Panther Moderns, specifically Lupus Yonderboy. One of my favorite parts of Neuromancer is when Lupus has his interaction with Armitage and says (from the link below) "Lupus didn't bother to count it, being sure that 'Mr. Who' paid well to remain so, and not be a 'Mr. Name', which Armitage received as a threat."<p>Gibson (and later Stephenson) were prescient enough to realize that anonymity would be a commodity in the near future.<p><a href="https://williamgibson.fandom.com/wiki/Lupus_Yonderboy" rel="nofollow">https://williamgibson.fandom.com/wiki/Lupus_Yonderboy</a><p>Really excited to see what Apple does with these guys in the upcoming adaptation.
Gibson also had the 'ugly t-shirt' in Zero History, designed to mess with facial recognition
<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/facial-recognition-t-shirt-block/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/story/facial-recognition-t-shirt-block...</a>
It would work until algorithms were adjusted to it, which would happen as soon as significant number of people started doing it. Colors are defeated by desaturating, which is no issue since most face recognition algos run on greyscale data anyways. Blotches of bright and dark are defeated, for example, by a high-pass filter (eg: edge detection) on the brightness data to filter out large blotches but keep small detail
I'll make sure to wear my Juggalo makeup the next time I visit China to avoid their face scanning technology. That'll surely help me blend into the background.
So maybe they may be smarter then they get credited for being. Probably not. But now anyone feeling uncomfortable about facial recognition tech now know what they can do to combat it if they chose. One question. Can you get thru the airport and onto a plan wearing the makeup?
Clickbait, it’s a couple tweets microwaved and the 3rd paragraph is “well, except for modern facial recognition”
This feels like the real-life equivalent of that old Family Guy joke where Peter is with a squad of dudes in Vietnam but is dressed like a clown. He says something to the effect of "You guys are stupid. They're going to be looking for army guys." Outside of the absurdity of the situation, the joke is that the guy dressed as a clown obviously stands out even more.<p>Juggalo makeup might block some facial recognition tech, but you also paint a huge target on yourself.
>covering features impacts accuracy of feature-based classifiers<p>More new at 9. Plus it's from 2019.
Whoop whoop
Where my Juggalos at??
Sounds like a lot of work. Are Groucho glasses effective, perhaps with obscured lenses?
I’m more curious about how robust this is against modern systems.
A lot of newer facial recognition models are trained on occlusions, masks, and heavy makeup — so this might be less effective than people assume.
It's not actually an oversight or training failure; as one of the six societies which secretly rule the world, the Juggalos simply demand to be exempt from facial recognition.
Juggalos, bronies, 9th doctor fans, billionaires, royals (baseball team), and royals (landed nobility)?
In _Inside Job_, it was Juggalos, the Illuminati, the Catholic Church, Cognito Inc [the main feature of the show, kind of the Deep State], the Atlanteans, and the Reptoids.
I'm wondering how well the Zenni optical ID guard coatings actually work.
It's likely that e.g. wifi-based gait analysis can be deployed to defeat this.<p>The only saving grace is you can't run that against video surveillance footage.
(2019) ... but sadly increasingly relevant.
well written but i disagree with the conclusion. the data supports multiple interpretations
With facial recognition camaras everywhere.<p>Might be time become a juggalo.
... reminds me of the time I was in Quebec and there was a Montréal Canadiens game near my hotel and there was a fan taking up most of the elevator because he was dressed up like a player, mask and all!
Also blocks magnets.
maybe it's just from being covered in Faygo?
Faygo is unironically delicious. They used to sell them for $1 a pop (Midwestern pun intended) on the East Coast in gas stations. Diet varieties of Orange, Moon Mist, and Root Beer were personal favorites.<p>No idea whether this is still the case as I haven't been in a Sheetz in years.
Most grocery stores still sell Faygo in Michigan. But you rarely see more than the most popular 3 or so (boring) flavors. I remember there being at least a half-dozen different Faygo flavors at every kid's birthday party in the 80's.
Sheetz quit carrying Faygo long ago, at least in and around Philly.
Fucking magnets and shit, how do they even work?
Remember kids - don't pick up any currency lying on the ground at an ICP concert. It most likely has poop on it.
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counterpoint: this assumes everyone has the same constraints. not always true