Thursday
Apr082010
Camouflage Makeup Seeks to Foil Face-detection Technology
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 8:41AM 
Can simple camouflage techniques undo the work of face-detection surveillance cameras? Adam Harvey, a designer and technologist with NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, thinks so.
According to Popular Science, after reverse-engineering the algorithms behind face detection, Harvey created a series of blocky images that he says could be the “building blocks of anti-surveillance makeup.” Harvey has found that the most successful patterns are smaller than you might guess: A few random patches of makeup scattered around the eye seem to confuse face-detection software more effectively than larger patterns.
For those of you who are spooked by advancements like the facial recognition software iPhone app, Harvey’s research might lead to an easy—yet potentially off-putting—fix.
According to Popular Science, after reverse-engineering the algorithms behind face detection, Harvey created a series of blocky images that he says could be the “building blocks of anti-surveillance makeup.” Harvey has found that the most successful patterns are smaller than you might guess: A few random patches of makeup scattered around the eye seem to confuse face-detection software more effectively than larger patterns.
For those of you who are spooked by advancements like the facial recognition software iPhone app, Harvey’s research might lead to an easy—yet potentially off-putting—fix.
Reader Comments (21)
>Interesting. Reminds me of that Robin Williams film from a few years ago, The Final Cut, where everyone had tracking and recording information embedded from birth and they would get magnetic tattoos to disrupt the signals.
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Captcha for your face? Of course it'd work...
Very informative post. Thanks for taking the time to share your view with us.
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Ok. I think you are right. Could you please suggest the cheap Rubbermaid lazy susan info！...
Good luck getting people behind this one. Though you make some VERY fascinating points, youre going to have to do more than bring up a few things that may be different than what weve already heard. What are trying to say here? What do you want us to think? It seems like you cant really get behind a unique thought. Anyway, thats just my opinion.
Thanks for sharing, really cool site
Nice blogs look =) my eyes love it
makeup is my religion =)
Problem is, the effort to keep pattern recognition from working flags you to any passing (or remotely watching) human cop. How can we block without being intuitively obvious?
Looking at those sample images, I must say the looks of protagonists from cyberpunk media now finally make sense. They were trying to foil optical recognition, not just follow insane 80s trends!
In seriousness, an interesting read. But it shouldn't be necessary. We should never allow surveillance to get to the point that we need to disguise ourselves in public. Especially not those who are morally just.
If your blog had some kind of facial recognition system, maybe it could avoid all these comments posted by spambots
Finally, a way to get rid of that bucket
Good news for us in the gothic/industrial scene then. We apparently pre empted the solution.
So this is why Lady Gaga wears such weird makeup
Common sense, really. Basic magician's work. All that's done is to fool the machine into thinking that some is (or isn't) where it's supposed to be. This may be done through light diffraction or reflection, or through disruption of IR data. The same thing was done by the UK services with the help of stage magician Jasper Maskelyne during WWII. The most appropriate example would be the use of lighter and darker shades of paint to disrupt the optical signature of a hull. Ie; to make a 'fast' hull seem to be a slower fishing trawler.
It would be incredibly fun to try this out sometime on a professional level and see if it really does work. I'm about 95% sure that it would the first go around.
I've been waiting for this all my life, finally I'm able to get rid of that bucket. ;)
@bill : by having everyone do this. Remember all those movies from the 80's/90's showing the 'dystopian' future, where everyone looked like an acid trip? yeah, biometrics would shit themselves trying to decode that, and in enough volume, the cops would be desensitized to it. Just think, if enough people dressed like a Tim Burton batman movie, a) the level of uniqueness would be enough that a computer would not be able to make a positive identification, and b) the level of ubiquity would mean that the average bystander would have a hard time determining what techno-punk was the culprit...
Harley Quinn. She knows what up