Juggalo makeup blocks facial recognition technology (2019)
203 points - today at 1:02 PM
Sourcethrowway120385
today at 3:47 PM
The only way to meaningfully defeat surveillance technology is to make a constitutional amendment that limits its use privately and publicly. We keep fighting it technologically which is an arms race. A cultural solution is the only path forward that will see meaningful success.
> The only way to meaningfully defeat surveillance technology is to make a constitutional amendment that limits its use privately and publicly
So, contextually, a constitutional amendment to force private and public use of Juggalo Makeup?
It’s extreme, but bold change requires bold steps.
SunshineTheCat
today at 8:17 PM
All in favor, say aye!
hamdingers
today at 6:57 PM
People find their ring cameras too useful, businesses love cloud based security camera systems, facial recognition and cloud backup are expected features of every phone's photo app, courts consider recording integral to first amendment expression.
These are some big rocks you'll need to move, otherwise your amendment won't be worth the paper it's written on. Just saying "you can collect all the data, but don't use it for surveillance" doesn't mean much.
I have no solutions, feels like we missed the boat if there ever was an opportunity to prevent it in the first place. We live in public now.
Just this week I've been taking walks in my neighborhood, and the number of homes that chime or play a voice recording to indicate being recorded was shocking. I just indicate to them that I think they are number 1. In other situations where I'm in public with a camera cleary pointed in my direction I tend to do that with my hand in front of my face. If they are going to blur out the #1 sign, my face gets conveniently blurred as well. They might have a right to record, but I also have a right to silently express my opinion as well.
MidnightRider39
today at 8:25 PM
> they are number 1
Maybe I’m daft but what does this mean?
Giving the bird. Someone's not using their inner 12 year old self.
excalibur
today at 8:38 PM
When you're walking around with your finger over your face all day, you should extend your thumb as well, so everyone can tell you're a Legend.
Maybe I should just get a custom sticker for my forehead. I'd fit in at cons with everyone walking around as a hologram
Not sure if I agree that the only solution is to give up now; we need sensible people that know how the technology works in power and that are not beholden to serve big corporations, but rather the average person. We need less populist and long-drawn campaigns. We need less politicizing. And we need all of that yesterday.
>People find their ring cameras too useful, businesses love cloud based security camera systems, facial recognition and cloud backup are expected features of every phone's photo app, courts consider recording integral to first amendment expression.
As long as the recordings aren't centrally stored and sold in bulk, and sold to brokers and governments, that would still be ok.
conception
today at 7:28 PM
You can have a ring camera- “just”make it illegal to share/sell the data from it. Have it be an audit item.
I don't think "courts consider recording integral to first amendment expression" is fully correct.
Otherwise there could not be states with two-party/all-party consent requirements for making an recording.
I think requiring all-party consent for facial recognition would not have 1st amendment issues.
Implementation details and effectiveness are, of course, very different issues.
I don’t think it will happen for at least a couple of reasons. The “deep state” in the US and elsewhere will not allow it and would find workarounds ala five eyes. And two, the right wants to spy on the left and the left wants to spy on the right. Only a small sliver of libertarians are strongly against spying “the domestic baddies.” So there is no chance.
The only reason the deep state or anyone has any power is because most people don't care. If people cared, we could change. Modern politics is all about distracting everyone with some crazy as often as possible to keep shifting attention and basically disabling any progress.
the deepstate has power because they will literally kill you if you don't and that's not the worst option. The deepstate will honeytrap, hack, blackmail, or otherwise destroy your life to get what "it" wants. People caring more isn't going to do anything if the Congressman doesn't want it known that he likes easy access to money and other illegal things.
throwway120385
today at 8:41 PM
We have a constitution because people demanded what they wanted at peril of their life.
>The only reason the deep state or anyone has any power is because most people don't care. If people cared, we could change.
Yes, but that's just restating the problem.
dec0dedab0de
today at 7:34 PM
The only reason the deep state or anyone has any power is because most people don't care.
I think bribery, blackmail, and extortion have a bit to do with it to.
Avicebron
today at 5:55 PM
There's some of that, there is also metric tons of money being used to keep the corporate status quo..
As long as it is accessible and useful, it will be used. Organized crime is around despite it being illegal. Considering how lucrative tracking people is, people will do it illegally. Even corporations as long as penalties aren't significant enough. We really need a three strikes law for corporations. Three egregious intentional violations and corp, is dissolved all assets going to support the needy.
b00ty4breakfast
today at 5:28 PM
"things should be legal because some people will do it anyways" is not a very compelling argument. I'm sure I don't need to explain to you why extrapolating this line of though to, for example, murder is silly and not worth taking serious.
hallway_monitor
today at 7:21 PM
Love the last bit. Lack of accountability for corporations is a problem. That plus stiff penalties for executives or individuals using facial recognition without consent should put a stop to it pretty quickly.
echelon_musk
today at 1:43 PM
Shamelessly hijacking this story to recommend The Private Eye digital comic [0]. Set in a future where everyone has normalised the wearing of masks in public to preserve their anonymity. The protagonist refuses to get a driving license because he wouldn't want a photo of himself in a database.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Eye
Thanks for that! Vaughan is great. It's funny that it's a digital release considering the topic. That small sense of unease I feel each time I feed my personal and credit card data into yet another website should only enhance the experience.
embedding-shape
today at 6:55 PM
Slightly bad example as it seems the company did "one of the first DRM-free, pay what you want comics", going to the website you can enter 0 and download without giving any other details (besides everything else you leak on the web): http://panelsyndicate.com/comics/tpeye
Ever since Covid, people are obscuring their faces in public more often. I especially see gig workers wearing balaclavas. Partially for sun and wind protection, but potentially for anonymity
burningChrome
today at 5:28 PM
I would also add the Netflix movie "Anon" which came out in 2018:
In the near future, humanity lives in a technologically advanced, dystopian society. The government requires that everyone receive an ocular implant that records everything they see. The implant provides an augmented-reality head-up display to the user with information about anyone and anything they may see, as well as recording the user's view. Investigations into crimes amount to detectives reviewing video and assessing whether an alleged perpetrator is innocent or guilty.
Sal Friedland, a detective with the metropolitan police force, crosses paths with a young woman who appears to trigger a glitch in his ocular implant, as no data about her is retrieved. When he reviews his own record of that day, he finds that every single frame of her has been mysteriously deleted. At work, Sal is handed several homicide cases where the victims' own visual records of their deaths are replaced with the killer's point of view, thus hiding the killer's identity. At another murder scene, Sal chases the apparent killer only to nearly be killed when they hack his implant and change what he sees in real time.
GinsengJar
today at 4:00 PM
You got any other comics to recommend in this style/genre? Cyberpunk, dystopia, etc
Transmetropolitan was pretty good.
gopher_space
today at 7:35 PM
The subtext of that comic felt a bit like “what if Hunter Thompson was mostly sober?”
I cannot recommend Transmetropolitan enough. It should be required reading.
Considering how long ago it was written it's both surprising and unfortunate how relevant it is to where we are now
> refuses to get a driving license because he wouldn't want a photo of himself in a database.
I refuse to get a "RealID" for nearly the same reasons.
Hey I wrote a paper about this exactly ten years ago! https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04504
I focused on facebook’s detector (not recognizer) for reasons explained in the intro, but face rec has come a long way since then.
adamsmark
today at 9:01 PM
Whoop! Whoop!
Need to disappear? Just go to the Gathering and find your new family. Pay for protection with Faygo.
I was hoping my corpse paint would also be effective at blocking facial recognition too.
Not surprising at all. It's a form of dazzle camouflage that has previously been shown to confuse facial recognition[0]. It's probably possible to design it to be more effective yet less intrusive than juggalo makeup.
I would have actually expected it to be more popular by now.
[0] https://adam.harvey.studio/cvdazzle/
Isn't being non-white good enough to not be identified as you? Sure, you might get identified as someone else altogether, but that's moving the goal posts from just not being identified. /s
throwawaypath
today at 3:16 PM
Did I accidentally sleep in a time machine? Front page of HN right now has articles on Juggalos and Afroman.
iguana_shine
today at 3:35 PM
The Millennials are getting nostalgic
It's so funny when a member of the younger generation comments. Younger generations are always trying to kill off the older generations. Both physically and metaphorically, too!
It makes sense in a way. If you were actually successful in doing that, you could finally make the world in your image instead of having to work around all those pesky "legacy" viewpoints that hold back the True Progress of the Younger Generation. But alas, the older generation still exists, because the younger can't do it.
But do continue with the passive aggressive comments. While it keeps me spry, you still get paid entry-level wages when you should be kings.
dlev_pika
today at 3:55 PM
As a xennial I wish we had successfully “killed” the boomers, but instead we have 3 septuagenarians blowing shit up all over the world
We failed so hard
Yeah, great anticipation for the undoubtedly forward-looking xennial Mojtaba Khamenei in Iran.
mystraline
today at 4:20 PM
Gotta really "love" the fact that extremist Islamic country treats a whole host of people horribly (women, gays, non-muslims).
But if you say anything about it, you're an islamophobe.
Same way if you criticize Israel's actions, youre lambasted as a jew-hater. But at least now thats starting to change.
Gotta really "love" the fact that bigots and xenophobes treat a whole host of religions and regions horribly.
To them Islamic or Arab is monoculture.
Same way all countries in the Mid East are all barbaric and savage. But at least now thats starting to change.
Gotta really "love" the fact that "bigots and xenophobes" is its own overly-broad brush
mystraline
today at 8:09 PM
I am OK with you personally practicing a religion and its rules.
I am NOT OK with you forcing me to follow some religion's rules.
And yes, I will look down on countries whom choose to force a specific religion on everyone. We can look in our own backyard, with multiple abortion bans, which lead to many women dying due to miscarriage and needing abortion. Was illegal (cause of baby Jesus, spit) so women died.
Or we can look at Saudi Arabia school fire in 2002 where the girls didn't have headdresses and were shoved back in. They died due to radical Islamic bullshit. Or the idea of "Religious police".
Religion and government should never mix. Not ever. Our founding fathers and Marx were all right about that.
Because people in the former group don't criticize those countries, they criticize Islam, and tend to categorize all Muslims (specifically Muslim immigrants) as ontologically evil.
Meanwhile people in the latter group tend to be very specific that their criticism is of a state and its policies, rather than the religion of Judaism or Jews in general, even though their efforts tend to fall on deaf ears.
We hate the demagogue for being a demagogue and their followers for being stupid.
mystraline
today at 4:38 PM
Indeed, it both feels like the same type of pro-theocratic propaganda. Its a way to disingenuously claim "you hate everyone of our group", when thats demonstrably not true. You likely hate the actions a country masquerading as the group inflicts against others.
My disdain is for all theocratic countries. I dont particularly care for any religion that takes over a government.
And I do include the USA in that, as theocratic fundamentalist christanity. Ive done so since changing the pledge of allegience and adding "in god we trust" on the currency.
burningChrome
today at 5:30 PM
What would you change?
masfuerte
today at 7:05 PM
Look on the bright side. In three months Trump won't be a septuagenarian any more.
cucumber3732842
today at 4:05 PM
They're getting old, and with that enough of them are getting rich. And that makes them worth pandering to so they can be parted from their money. See for example all the commercials that feature 90s crap and political talking points intended to appeal to them.
stronglikedan
today at 4:16 PM
On a side note, sleep is indistinguishable from time travel.
The early 2000s are back baby
defective
today at 5:15 PM
Hilary Duff just released a new album too.
Let's not bring back Windows ME
marcosdumay
today at 4:03 PM
Compared to 11?
bacchusracine
today at 4:05 PM
I'm thinking...give me a minute....
marcosdumay
today at 6:04 PM
Take your time. It's updating...
Well, the local file search is much better on ME at least.
soopypoos
today at 1:36 PM
I wonder if I'm more likely to get denied entry wearing juggalo face or classic camo paint
QuantumNomad_
today at 1:44 PM
Depends. Are you attending an ICP concert, or a military reenactment convention, or something else entirely?
_doctor_love
today at 7:49 PM
If it's the gathering, then all of the above is more or less true.
You would want to test the camo. I suspect there is more than just changing ones appearance. I believe I've seen a story talking about not needing to see the entire face. You can still id people wearing neck gaiters and other face coverings if you can make out the facial contour. I think you needed about a third of the face uncovered. https://hyperverge.co/blog/masked-face-recognition/
Edit found a link pretty fast.
hallway_monitor
today at 7:25 PM
Pretty sure gait analysis is as good as facial recognition. Maybe wearing shoes with weird heights would confuse it
LooseMarmoset
today at 8:15 PM
I wonder if kawaii face paint would work
In 2018 it was already common knowledge that gait analysis was more accurate than facial recognition at the time. This would have been defeatable then.
water-data-dude
today at 3:21 PM
Gait recognition is also easier to defeat. All you need is to put something like a few pebbles or coins in one of your shoes
glenstein
today at 3:22 PM
I think dazzle camouflage is best understood as having limited scope of application as pertains to face recognition. It shouldn't be regarded as failing within its intended scope on account of gait analysis. Everyone knows you have to learn the juggalo dance moves to go along with the face paint.
beepbooptheory
today at 3:00 PM
How are everyone's gaits being collected? Is there gait databases at the NSA? Not being skeptical! Honestly very interesting.
angiolillo
today at 4:10 PM
DARPA projects from more than a decade ago (VSAM/WAMI for arial platforms like Gorgon Stare) used arial imagery to capture ground shadows for gait tracking purposes.
From chatting with some of the researchers many years ago my understanding is that it usually wasn't accurate enough for unique identification and the gait shadow was dependent on shoe type and clothing, so a persistent gait shadow database wouldn't have been useful. But it could be correlated with ground-based surveillance for identification, for example person A and B were identified on a ground-based security camera entering a building, then gait tracking could be used to monitor where they went after they left the building even if they avoided ground-based security cameras after that point.
We only have discussions of the Chinese rolling out gait tracking widely. Basically you use existing facial databases to match ids to people in observed areas and capture their gait as they pass observed areas. Then it goes into the database. Using partial matching (non ideal observation of gait or face) allows for greater positive matching in non-ideal circumstances.
You could compare gaits between footage of a crime and footage of you in another public place, probably?
I don't think I've heard of it being used though.
ChrisMarshallNY
today at 1:41 PM
I guess LiveNation won't be running ICP concerts, then...
world2vec
today at 2:51 PM
They'll just charge an additional makeup fee...
bigfishrunning
today at 1:39 PM
Miracles all around us
Here's the thing about "fucking magnets; how do they work?" How do magnets work? No less a science communicator than Richard Feynman—he of the rubber sheet gravity spacetime analogy—had no analogy to communicate why ferromagnetism creates attraction and repulsion. Here's his incredibly shaggy dog non-answer to the question about how magnets work wherein he says that there are no pat answers to "why" questions. He gets to the money line: "I cannot explain that attraction in terms of anything else that's familiar to you" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8
So I will defend that line in the song. I will only accept answers from people who can explain why ferromagnetism works to me assuming I know how electromagnets create magnetic fields.
And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist
Y’all MFs unable to address the replication crisis, and getting me pissed
Forgeties79
today at 2:15 PM
You could throw on the SNL skit or the real video and frankly I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference
deltoidmaximus
today at 4:49 PM
In Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson one of the characters happens by a group of young women wearing devices that project constantly changing colored light patterns onto their faces to prevent facial recognition tracking. It's barely even mentioned in the book but I wondered how viable that was of an idea. The character's only thought on the devices IIRC was that most people only occasionally wore them.
nervousvarun
today at 5:54 PM
As with most things cyberpunk, Gibson also did this masterfully w/ the Panther Moderns, specifically Lupus Yonderboy. One of my favorite parts of Neuromancer is when Lupus has his interaction with Armitage and says (from the link below) "Lupus didn't bother to count it, being sure that 'Mr. Who' paid well to remain so, and not be a 'Mr. Name', which Armitage received as a threat."
Gibson (and later Stephenson) were prescient enough to realize that anonymity would be a commodity in the near future.
https://williamgibson.fandom.com/wiki/Lupus_Yonderboy
Really excited to see what Apple does with these guys in the upcoming adaptation.
It would work until algorithms were adjusted to it, which would happen as soon as significant number of people started doing it. Colors are defeated by desaturating, which is no issue since most face recognition algos run on greyscale data anyways. Blotches of bright and dark are defeated, for example, by a high-pass filter (eg: edge detection) on the brightness data to filter out large blotches but keep small detail
It would be interesting to first create a taxonomy of juggalo face paint patterns a la aruco markers/April tags, then see if a sufficiently large crowd of juggalos could be used to calibrate cameras
> a sufficiently large crowd of juggalos
Some kind of gathering of the Juggalos?
hackitup7
today at 2:49 PM
I'll make sure to wear my Juggalo makeup the next time I visit China to avoid their face scanning technology. That'll surely help me blend into the background.
So maybe they may be smarter then they get credited for being. Probably not. But now anyone feeling uncomfortable about facial recognition tech now know what they can do to combat it if they chose. One question. Can you get thru the airport and onto a plan wearing the makeup?
refulgentis
today at 1:40 PM
Clickbait, it’s a couple tweets microwaved and the 3rd paragraph is “well, except for modern facial recognition”
everdrive
today at 1:42 PM
This feels like the real-life equivalent of that old Family Guy joke where Peter is with a squad of dudes in Vietnam but is dressed like a clown. He says something to the effect of "You guys are stupid. They're going to be looking for army guys." Outside of the absurdity of the situation, the joke is that the guy dressed as a clown obviously stands out even more.
Juggalo makeup might block some facial recognition tech, but you also paint a huge target on yourself.
There’s an xkcd: <https://www.xkcd.com/1105/>
I genuinely believe there's an xkcd for everything. I was only reading about the creator, Randall Munroe a few days ago and he's clearly very talented.
>covering features impacts accuracy of feature-based classifiers
More new at 9. Plus it's from 2019.
schmeichel
today at 1:32 PM
Where my Juggalos at??
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, sitting behind the resolute desk. That person wears more makeup than some of the performers on RuPaul's Drag Race.
Detroit rap rock neatly broke along the prevailing political tendencies in the US
1. Kid Rock is the MAGA candidate. This makes sense: he was the scion the owner of many car dealerships and grew up in a house with an apple orchard and a horse stable but claims to be salt of the earth focused on kitchen table issues and also endless moneyed personal delight. Great article on the 2023 NADA convention, btw: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/rich-republicans...
2. Juggalos went lumpenprole left. Bad optics, problematic past statements, ultimately proudly unsophisticatedly populist
3. Eminem made "awfully hot coffee pot" and Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann went apeshit for it. MSNBC lib.
_doctor_love
today at 7:51 PM
I'm not sure if I totally agree but this is an amazing breakdown.
The thing about Eminem is that I would have just as easily lumped him in with South Park Man-bear-pig style "actually it's square to care about politics" but "awfully hot coffee pot" having already made "Mosh" put it over the edge.
nathan_compton
today at 2:02 PM
Don't sully the good name of Juggalos this way.
garciansmith
today at 3:45 PM
"By the time Presidents Jay and Dope were elected, western civilization had officially fucked itself over forever, and I think everyone knew it."
https://homestuck.com/006765
mixmastamyk
today at 5:41 PM
Sounds like a lot of work. Are Groucho glasses effective, perhaps with obscured lenses?
I’m more curious about how robust this is against modern systems.
A lot of newer facial recognition models are trained on occlusions, masks, and heavy makeup — so this might be less effective than people assume.
saalweachter
today at 2:16 PM
It's not actually an oversight or training failure; as one of the six societies which secretly rule the world, the Juggalos simply demand to be exempt from facial recognition.
atomicnumber3
today at 2:41 PM
Juggalos, bronies, 9th doctor fans, billionaires, royals (baseball team), and royals (landed nobility)?
saalweachter
today at 3:29 PM
In _Inside Job_, it was Juggalos, the Illuminati, the Catholic Church, Cognito Inc [the main feature of the show, kind of the Deep State], the Atlanteans, and the Reptoids.
amanaplanacanal
today at 3:43 PM
I'm wondering how well the Zenni optical ID guard coatings actually work.
stackghost
today at 2:48 PM
It's likely that e.g. wifi-based gait analysis can be deployed to defeat this.
The only saving grace is you can't run that against video surveillance footage.
fc417fc802
today at 3:34 PM
But you can run video-based gait analysis against video surveillance footage. You can also index physical fingerprints other than the face.
Maybe I should start wearing a hazmat suit with an opaque faceplate whenever I leave the house.
Findecanor
today at 1:40 PM
(2019) ... but sadly increasingly relevant.
dvinciyuri89
today at 4:51 PM
well written but i disagree with the conclusion. the data supports multiple interpretations
FrustratedMonky
today at 6:22 PM
With facial recognition camaras everywhere.
Might be time become a juggalo.
PaulHoule
today at 5:48 PM
... reminds me of the time I was in Quebec and there was a Montréal Canadiens game near my hotel and there was a fan taking up most of the elevator because he was dressed up like a player, mask and all!
dsiegel2275
today at 3:47 PM
Also blocks magnets.
maybe it's just from being covered in Faygo?
alexjplant
today at 2:51 PM
Faygo is unironically delicious. They used to sell them for $1 a pop (Midwestern pun intended) on the East Coast in gas stations. Diet varieties of Orange, Moon Mist, and Root Beer were personal favorites.
No idea whether this is still the case as I haven't been in a Sheetz in years.
Most grocery stores still sell Faygo in Michigan. But you rarely see more than the most popular 3 or so (boring) flavors. I remember there being at least a half-dozen different Faygo flavors at every kid's birthday party in the 80's.
you just called rock 'n rye a boring flavor??
it's one of the regulars here i'd say. in my head i see cola/rye/cream as the "always available" at convenient stores etc
HardwareLust
today at 5:13 PM
Sheetz quit carrying Faygo long ago, at least in and around Philly.
general_reveal
today at 4:08 PM
Fucking magnets and shit, how do they even work?
tinfoilhatter
today at 5:43 PM
Remember kids - don't pick up any currency lying on the ground at an ICP concert. It most likely has poop on it.
stotemoat
today at 6:58 PM
[dead]
gethwhunter34
today at 3:21 PM
counterpoint: this assumes everyone has the same constraints. not always true