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“We’re now approaching the technological threshold where the little guys can do it to the big guys.”
In a recent story for the New York Times, tech reporter Kashmir Hill profiled activists who use facial recognition to identify police officers who cover their badges or name tags during protests. As technologist Andrew Maximov described, it’s a way for the “little guys” to turn the tables on the authorities.
“It’s not just the loss of anonymity. It’s the threat of infamy,” he said.
The technology relies on open-source solutions. Christopher Howell, an activist in Portland, Oregon, is developing facial recognition to identify police using Google’s TensorFlow, a machine learning platform. You can download TensorFlow yourself for free, and with a bit of help from facial recognition tutorials, code the project yourself.
Read more about activists using facial recognition against police here:
