The High Fashion of Countering Facial Recognition
As surveillance technology pervades public spaces, evading Big Brother has become a wearable art
There’s a hidden benefit to being a Juggalo: the dedicated, cosplaying fans of the Detroit hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse. Juggalos are known for their thick, uncompromising face paint, which also turns out to be an effective countersurveillance technique.
The security researcher @takhion has tested various methods for breaking the facial recognition algorithms used in a growing array of consumer tech and digital surveillance applications, and discovered the technologically viable countersurveillance tactic almost by chance. “I started making jokes about Juggalos at work one day,” Ian O’Neill (aka @takhion) told OneZero. “Then we were like, why don’t we try it?” He wasn’t expecting that the black-and-white clown makeup sported by Insane Clown Posse and their fans would be quite so effective.
Facial recognition algorithms have been under development for decades, but recent advances in consumer tech have brought biometric capabilities closer to home. iPhone X users can unlock their devices and make payments with Face ID, while Facebook’s quiet cultivation of “the largest facial dataset to date” enables the site to accurately suggest which friends to tag…
