Dodging Big Brother: How to stay anonymous in a world of facial recognition systems
AI-enhanced surveillance technology is now a threat to personal liberty in many places, but there are some creative ways you can throw the surveillance robots off your scent
State-run facial recognition programmes are no longer the stuff of dystopian fiction. Artificial intelligence-enhanced surveillance technology has become a real threat to personal liberty in Hong Kong and around the world today.
While face masks and sunglasses are obvious solutions to avoid being recognised on camera, we look at a few other creative ways to throw Big Brother off the scent.
Futuristic frames for protection
Polish designer Ewa Nowak of Noma Design Studio created the Incognito mask-slash-frame to trick facial recognition algorithms. The two brass circles under the eye and rectangle between the eyes make it impossible for facial recognition to take measurements of the distance between and height of features, effectively ensuring the wearer’s face is unreadable for cameras.
Pretend to be a car
Designed by Adversarial Fashion, their licence plate printed clothing is meant to feed junk information to automatic licence plate readers. If worn with other face-masking protection, it has been suggested that these pieces could fool surveillance robots into thinking you are a car.
Everyone can be John Doe