Protests, facial recognition, de-anonymization, and Belarus

For a while, facial recognition cameras have been used by powerful entities to identify 'undesirable' individuals. Now it seems that freely available technology is at a point where people can fight fire with fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAJIrnphTFg We're approaching peak cyberpunk. This opens even more questions regarding morality, justice, anonymity, potential for misidentification, etc. Another related topic is facial recognition through search engines. Google doesn't allow you to use their reverse image search for facial recognition, but Yandex does. And 'thanks' to the ubiquity of facial photos on social media, it's quite reliable: https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2019/12/26/guide-to-using-reverse-image-search-for-investigations/ However Yandex is, obviously, a Russian service, and it's almost certainly tied to the Kremlin. That, of course, opens up many other concerns. You can also use this thread to discuss the ongoing protests in Belarus or elsewhere.

>>19636 >We're approaching peak cyberpunk. This is an unironic advertisement https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=nkcKaNqfykg

>>19636 Google translation of video transcript, with some attempts at correcting translation/transcription errors: https://pastebin.com/ps9rjmnL Something worrying is that in the description it also says "Update: Guys, there is information that V.V. although it is similar but maybe not him. Now we are checking". Most of the faces do look spot-on, though.

>>19638 >https://pastebin.com/ps9rjmnL cloudflared

>>19639 Which site do you use then?

>>19636 I wonder if it really comes from the people or you're just seing another gov help the protesters because they benefit from a change in the countries owner. This tech is several years old already but i never saw it in public hands before.

>>19642 Who knows? For one, the guy in the video is based in the US. https://www.rferl.org/a/you-have-no-masks-belarus-protesters-use-high-tech-tools-to-unmask-riot-police/30858960.html

As a slightly related side note, is anyone interested in IR blocking glasses, thoughts? https://www.reflectacles.com/preorder/ircloak

>>19644 The assumption every lens will have IR is silly and if thats not the case it can't provide security. Furthermore the thread just showcased tech can demask you anyway. >>19643 I noticed they don't provide a link in the video to said tool and the guy is listed as a 3d artist. Was this just a cg video made by him and there's no tool at all?

>>19645 Normal sunglasses can provide security if IR isn't used.

>>19645 >Was this just a cg video made by him and there's no tool at all? That would be clever at first glance, but then the main purpose (demoralizing/doxxing) would fail pretty quickly if they realize there's no actual doxxing happening.

>>19638 >Update: Guys, there is information that V.V. although it is similar but maybe not him. Now we are checking And who will care if the guy was already doxxed and now receives death threats or just may get killed by an angry mob who never seen the update? This is just another Reddit Boston teract moment. Both sides are equally disgusting.

>>19648 The threat remains believable because the tech is real and was presented already several years ago in academia to demask demonstrators. Its just not in the hands of normal people. And they could keep the boogeyman alive by simple using conventional methods to doxx people and then claim they have this tool and can do it to anyone.

>>19636 >However Yandex is, obviously, a Russian service, and it's almost certainly tied to the Kremlin. That, of course, opens up many other concerns. Umm, the Snowden revelations happened sweetie. It's not like Google is any better.

>>19654 Google wasn't aware they were providing the NSA with all that info. After the dumps they started putting internal node to node traffic inside of ssh tunnels.

>>19636 >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAJIrnphTFg Download in 1080p with English subtitles (requires youtube-dl and ffmpeg installed): youtube-dl --write-auto-sub --sub-lang en -f137+140 --embed-subs https://youtube.com/watch?v=FAJIrnphTFg -o "AI-unmasking.mp4"

>>19655 >Google wasn't aware they were providing the NSA with all that info. >wasn't aware >plausible deniability doesn't exist >PRISM doesn't exist >Google joined PRISM accidentally lmao! Best cope joke I've heard in ages! Thanks! Have you thought of posting on Facebook? I'm sure you'd prefer it to here.

>>19636 Working facial recognition is very old news Video posted by OP is an "art project" with le voice of people man speaking some deep speeches in the background, the so-called AI is used to overlay faces, if ever, not to find them, police was probably deanonymized using leaked documents that contain their addresses, full names and photos, then the search proceeded to social networks, police database leaks are a common occasion in this part of the world. There's even an author's commentary under video about uncertainty whether it's the right man or not, if they really did a software search on VK photo databases, there'd been many other matches to compare. Real life tools have more than 80% accuracy and work fulltime in Moscow since 2017 serving 200k "open" cameras on streets, entrances, hospitals and schools, about as many on "closed" networks of subway, buses, commute rail and road crossings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FindFace https://web.archive.org/web/20170813180954/http://jesuismaidan.com/ https://birdinflight.com/ru/vdohnovenie/fotoproect/06042016-face-big-data.html You can buy access to city cameras for 15 000 roubles on darknet forums. Hell, you can even buy live metadata logs for any mobile number in Russia, it's not a big deal.

Something like this

What do lainons actually propose as an real solution against facial recognition? Curious techlet here

>>19663 Camera confusing clothing, infrared LEDs on clothing, odd style sense to confuse recognition software

>>19670 How that is better than destroying all technology?

>>19670 Fooling facial recognition is mostly a matter of having the thing not see you as a face, which mostly involves hiding facial landmarks. This is not necessarily a simple task, as OP's picture illustrates. Generally speaking, inter-eye distance is one of the more important features it looks for. Common eyeware like sunglasses, goggles, etc. are probably well represented in the training set and thus not particularly adversarial, but if you come up with something weirder to hide your eyes there's less it can do. And frankly if you're wearing a mask that covers your whole face with sunglasses it will have nothing to go off of (so long as the mask is not so tight that your bone structure is visible). The same general principles apply to full body/gait recognition. In some ways its harder to disguise by on the other hand the algorithms are less well developed and its harder for police to visually confirm what they produce. However, it can still bring you into the picture so at the end of the day its best to simply not be on camera in the first place. >Camera confusing clothing This is largely synonymous with the kind of clothing you'd use to hide your identity from people, with the additional caveats about the importance of hiding the eyes and bone structure. You may have read something about adversarial examples: stickers or weird hair-makeup styles that fool facial recognition. These are very promising in the long term, but at the moment they categorically do not work well. They tend to be conceived of as a proof of concept or an art project of some kind and are targeted at a single implementation. In fact, the way they work is pretty much necessarily specialized to a particular algorithm. >infrared LEDs on clothing This will dazzle night vision cameras but it will make you easier to follow and as long as one non-IR camera got a picture of you to correlate you'll be ID'd. Good for targetted applications where you know exactly what kind of equipment you're going against. Not great for general purpose camoflage.

>>19670 >>19673 dont forget that sometimes cops can arrest/fine you for not allowing yourself to be filmed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oJqJkfTdAg

Guess everyone is going to have to walk around in burkas >>19644 IR blocking glasses are price inflated. You can get the same thing with welding safety glasses iirc.

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>>19696 Some of them, yes. Welding glasses should block a lot more visible light however, it could be difficult to walk around with those on your face.