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 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.
The only reason the deep state or anyone has any power is because most people don't care. If people cared, we could change. Modern politics is all about distracting everyone with some crazy as often as possible to keep shifting attention and basically disabling any progress.
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.
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.
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.
I would also add the Netflix movie "Anon" which came out in 2018:
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.
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.
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
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.
I would have actually expected it to be more popular by now.
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!
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.
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.
Because people in the former group don't criticize those countries, they criticize Islam, and tend to categorize all Muslims (specifically Muslim immigrants) as ontologically evil.
Meanwhile people in the latter group tend to be very specific that their criticism is of a state and its policies, rather than the religion of Judaism or Jews in general, even though their efforts tend to fall on deaf ears.
Indeed, it both feels like the same type of pro-theocratic propaganda. Its a way to disingenuously claim "you hate everyone of our group", when thats demonstrably not true. You likely hate the actions a country masquerading as the group inflicts against others.
My disdain is for all theocratic countries. I dont particularly care for any religion that takes over a government.
And I do include the USA in that, as theocratic fundamentalist christanity. Ive done so since changing the pledge of allegience and adding "in god we trust" on the currency.
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.
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. https://hyperverge.co/blog/masked-face-recognition/
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."
Gibson (and later Stephenson) were prescient enough to realize that anonymity would be a commodity in the near future.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8
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.
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?
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.
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.
Juggalo makeup might block some facial recognition tech, but you also paint a huge target on yourself.
I genuinely believe there's an xkcd for everything. I was only reading about the creator, Randall Munroe a few days ago and he's clearly very talented.
... 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!
Detroit rap rock neatly broke along the prevailing political tendencies in the US
1. Kid Rock is the MAGA candidate. This makes sense: he was the scion the owner of many car dealerships and grew up in a house with an apple orchard and a horse stable but claims to be salt of the earth focused on kitchen table issues and also endless moneyed personal delight. Great article on the 2023 NADA convention, btw: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/rich-republicans...
2. Juggalos went lumpenprole left. Bad optics, problematic past statements, ultimately proudly unsophisticatedly populist
3. Eminem made "awfully hot coffee pot" and Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann went apeshit for it. MSNBC lib.
"By the time Presidents Jay and Dope were elected, western civilization had officially fucked itself over forever, and I think everyone knew it."
https://homestuck.com/006765
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.
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.
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.
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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Eye
I refuse to get a "RealID" for nearly the same reasons.
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.
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 would have actually expected it to be more popular by now.
[0] https://adam.harvey.studio/cvdazzle/
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.
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.
We failed so hard
But if you say anything about it, you're an islamophobe.
Same way if you criticize Israel's actions, youre lambasted as a jew-hater. But at least now thats starting to change.
To them Islamic or Arab is monoculture.
Same way all countries in the Mid East are all barbaric and savage. But at least now thats starting to change.
Meanwhile people in the latter group tend to be very specific that their criticism is of a state and its policies, rather than the religion of Judaism or Jews in general, even though their efforts tend to fall on deaf ears.
My disdain is for all theocratic countries. I dont particularly care for any religion that takes over a government.
And I do include the USA in that, as theocratic fundamentalist christanity. Ive done so since changing the pledge of allegience and adding "in god we trust" on the currency.
Edit found a link pretty fast.
Gibson (and later Stephenson) were prescient enough to realize that anonymity would be a commodity in the near future.
https://williamgibson.fandom.com/wiki/Lupus_Yonderboy
Really excited to see what Apple does with these guys in the upcoming adaptation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVSOHGGgKD4
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.
I don't think I've heard of it being used though.
Some kind of gathering of the Juggalos?
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.
Y’all MFs unable to address the replication crisis, and getting me pissed
Juggalo makeup might block some facial recognition tech, but you also paint a huge target on yourself.
More new at 9. Plus it's from 2019.
1. Kid Rock is the MAGA candidate. This makes sense: he was the scion the owner of many car dealerships and grew up in a house with an apple orchard and a horse stable but claims to be salt of the earth focused on kitchen table issues and also endless moneyed personal delight. Great article on the 2023 NADA convention, btw: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/rich-republicans...
2. Juggalos went lumpenprole left. Bad optics, problematic past statements, ultimately proudly unsophisticatedly populist
3. Eminem made "awfully hot coffee pot" and Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann went apeshit for it. MSNBC lib.
The only saving grace is you can't run that against video surveillance footage.
Maybe I should start wearing a hazmat suit with an opaque faceplate whenever I leave the house.
No idea whether this is still the case as I haven't been in a Sheetz in years.