Collaborate Disseminate
Fawkes is a system for manipulating digital images so that they aren’t recognized by facial recognition systems. At a high level, Fawkes takes your personal images, and makes tiny, pixel-level changes to them that are invisible to the human eye, in a process we call image cloaking. You can then use these "cloaked" photos as you normally would, sharing them… Continue reading Fawkes: Digital Image Cloaking
OneZero is tracking thirty countries around the world who are implementing surveillance programs in the wake of COVID-19: The most common form of surveillance implemented to battle the pandemic is the use of smartphone location data, which can track population-level movement down to enforcing individual quarantines. Some governments are making apps that offer coronavirus health information, while also sharing location… Continue reading Global Surveillance in the Wake of COVID-19
The Chinese facial recognition company Hanwang claims it can recognize people wearing masks: The company now says its masked facial recognition program has reached 95 percent accuracy in lab tests, and even claims that it is more accurate in real life, where its cameras take multiple photos of a person if the first attempt to identify them fails. […] Counter-intuitively,… Continue reading Facial Recognition for People Wearing Masks
Communities across the United States are starting to ban facial recognition technologies. In May of last year, San Francisco banned facial recognition; the neighboring city of Oakland soon followed, as did Somerville and Brookline in Massachusetts (a s… Continue reading Modern Mass Surveillance: Identify, Correlate, Discriminate
Communities across the United States are starting to ban facial recognition technologies. In May of last year, San Francisco banned facial recognition; the neighboring city of Oakland soon followed, as did Somerville and Brookline in Massachusetts (a statewide ban may follow). In December, San Diego suspended a facial recognition program in advance of a new statewide law, which declared it… Continue reading Modern Mass Surveillance: Identify, Correlate, Discriminate
The New York Times has a long story about Clearview AI, a small company that scrapes identified photos of people from pretty much everywhere, and then uses unstated magical AI technology to identify people in other photos. His tiny company, Clearview AI, devised a groundbreaking facial recognition app. You take a picture of a person, upload it and get to… Continue reading Clearview AI and Facial Recognition
This essay discusses the futility of opting out of surveillance, and suggests data obfuscation as an alternative. We can apply obfuscation in our own lives by using practices and technologies that make use of it, including: The secure browser Tor, which (among other anti-surveillance technologies) muddles our Internet activity with that of other Tor users, concealing our trail in that… Continue reading Obfuscation as a Privacy Tool
Coming out of the Privacy Commissioners’ Conference in Albania, Public Voice is launching a petition for an international moratorium on using facial recognition software for mass surveillance. You can sign on as an individual or an organization. I did. You should as well. No, I don’t think that countries will magically adopt this moratorium. But it’s important for us all… Continue reading Public Voice Launches Petition for an International Moratorium on Using Facial Recognition for Mass Surveillance
MIT Technology Review is reporting about an infrared laser device that can identify people by their unique cardiac signature at a distance: A new device, developed for the Pentagon after US Special Forces requested it, can identify people without seein… Continue reading Cardiac Biometric
MIT Technology Review is reporting about an infrared laser device that can identify people by their unique cardiac signature at a distance: A new device, developed for the Pentagon after US Special Forces requested it, can identify people without seeing their face: instead it detects their unique cardiac signature with an infrared laser. While it works at 200 meters (219… Continue reading Cardiac Biometric