6 ms·

Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that.

by sveme 8y ago

Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that. There might be a race between the recognition software and the circumvention technology, but a dedicated individual will always be able to avoid that. Normal people without any criminal, terrorist or activist intentions will be victims of this massive surveillance. I would actually hazard the guess that it will be easier for a dedicated individual to circumvent automated surveillance than the current status quo, being observed by individuals. A smart circumvention device will not be identified as such by a surveillance system, however, a human observer will. Regardless of circumvention possibilities, the ultimate aim of these ubiquitous surveillance systems isn't really reducing crime, but social engineering: create a panopticon, an all-observing system, and the population that knows this will avoid potentially incriminating behavior in the first place. A system designed to make people censor themselves and self-reduce their social degrees of freedom.

coldtea 8y ago
>Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that. Tons of political activists (and of course tons of criminals too) have been caught by way simpler and easier to trick methods.
dmos62 8y ago
> Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that I wouldn't be so sure. How well can you control your stance or manner of walking for example? Someone (human) trained to differentiate authors of handwritten text can often still do so even if an author is actively trying to write differently. I think ML is great for comparing these highly subtle traits.
- odessacubbage 8y ago
  a wheelchair seems like an easy bypass, albeit one with very specific use.
  - dmos62 8y ago
    I can see all subversives having wheelchairs in not-so-distant future.
    - xkcd-sucks 8y ago
      Heelys! Never underestimate the power of fads and fashion
  - Spare_account 8y ago
    Crutches, gait-modifying shoes, roller-skates There are lots of options
- sveme 8y ago
  Admittedly haven't explored this myself, but I would expect some insert in my shoes to significantly alter my gait. When I received orthopedic soles, these changed my whole stance and gait. Heck, if there's some twist in my socks, my stance and gait are changed as well. Curious to learn more how well gait recognition algorithms can remove these effects from their prediction.
- F_r_k 8y ago
  > how to control your stance or manner Quite "easy". Put a pebble in your shoe, or some scotch tape on your skin. You'll behave differently > Someone (human) trained to differentiate authors of handwritten text can often still do so even if an author is actively trying to write differently. That was never proven. Please cite a (good) source or I'll take it to be false
  - rqs 8y ago
    Time to bring up this educational video: https://youtu.be/JASUsVY5YJ8?t=280 https://youtu.be/JASUsVY5YJ8?t=280
  - dmos62 8y ago
    > Please cite a source. I can't, though I think you could argue about it deductively. > That was never proven. I guess you can't provide a source either :) > Put a pebble in your shoe, or some scotch tape on your skin. If someone you know well did that, would you be able to differentiate his limp from someone else's? I am sure you could. I think it's intuitive that our "limp" betrays features of our normal behaviour.
Inu 8y ago
> Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that. But if the system is not able to assign a face to a specific identity, it might immediately mark them as "suspicious". You'd have to bypass the system by really putting on the appearance of a face within the database.
- KineticLensman 8y ago
  Yes, someone with unknown identity, using a burner phone (or no phone) and only spending cash is going to stand out. State actors or suitably competent criminals may be able to use fake personas though.
titzer 8y ago
> There might be a race between the recognition software and the circumvention technology I wanna see someone successfully circumvent scent-based tracking. A dog has a sense of smell a million times more sensitive than a human and can track people over miles, even when a trail is days old. Imagine a network of 100,000 passive scent trackers as sensitive as dog noses, hooked up to the same centralized AI and recognition system. With a single high-confidence hit, they can localize you. If you're on foot, you're not getting very far in any reasonable time frame. We don't stand a chance. Sitting ducks, as it were. You just better hope to God (or the AI, apparently) you're never a target of this system, inadvertently or intentionally, because that race is over, and humans lost.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >A dog has a sense of smell a million times more sensitive than a human and can track people over miles, even when a trail is days old. Dogs don't work very well in urban areas and there's plenty of tricks to throw dogs off your trail.
  - kbos87 8y ago
    Even in rural areas, getting in a car usually means the end of where a dog can track someone.
  - titzer 8y ago
    I did not mean literally using dogs, but passive sensors installed, e.g. in lampposts. I'd like to see your tricks for dealing with 100,000 such sensors, one on every street corner. (also: https://www.canidae.com/blog/2015/10/can-you-throw-off-a-tracking-dogs-scent-with-pepper/ https://www.canidae.com/blog/2015/10/can-you-throw-off-a-tra... "In fact, Adam found that it was basically impossible to throw off the scent of a Bloodhound. He crossed a 100 foot wide, waist high river. He changed clothes, poured cologne and coffee on himself, threw smelly fish along the trail and used scent enzyme erasers to try to eliminate his scent.") May the odds be ever in your favor!
    - myrloc 8y ago
westpfelia 8y ago
"Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist" Or just someone that doesnt want to be tracked by everyone..
tootie 8y ago
> circumvention technology Like hats, glasses and beards?
nine_k 8y ago
It may happen that the approaches usable against automatic facial detectors would be pretty noticeable for humans around [1], thus rendering them pretty hard to use in practice, and also a target of anti-facial-recognition-paint recognition algorithms. [1] https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=dazzle+paint+face+facial+recognition https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=dazzle+paint+face+f...
eiaoa 8y ago
> Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that. There might be a race between the recognition software and the circumvention technology, but a dedicated individual will always be able to avoid that. One issue is disseminating the knowledge needed to defeat such systems. I'm sure the CIA and KGB have manuals and training programs to teach those skills [1], but I'm not sure if the information is publicly available in a readily accessible form (e.g. not spread in small pieces among 100 books). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JASUsVY5YJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JASUsVY5YJ8
zabana 8y ago
Genuine question, what is a terrorist ? It seems to be a very fluid definition these days. Anybody can be deemed a terrorist by any establishment. Also, this kind of thinking reinforces the whole "Well, I don't mind being watched by government agencies because I have nothing to hide" reaction, and it's quite frankly worriying. I'm open to discuss this further though
- c0nfused 8y ago
  The generally accepted definitions center around the use of violence to incite political change or polticial pressure by nonstate actors. Word in varies but that's the general gist. I know that the word gets thrown around a bunch, but it's a pretty simple idea. There is some controversy about if a state can be a terrorist, but typically we just call it state sponsored terrorism and move on.
- iamnothere 8y ago
  2000 definition: someone who blows things up for political reasons. 2018 definition: someone who makes angry posts on social media. I'm exaggerating a bit, but it's headed in that direction. If you want to see something truly worrying, look up the handful of idiots trying to promote the notion of "stochastic terrorism". The gist is that non-illegal statements which somehow get interpreted by lone nuts as incitement to violence should be categorized as a form of terrorism. Basically, they're hoping to criminalize angry rhetoric that stops well short of calls to violence. The good news is that they've been flogging this idea for a long time (pre-2016) and it still isn't really gaining ground.
tim333 8y ago
>Someone that does not want to be tracked ... will always be able to do that. I'm sure the Russians doing the Sailsbury attacks didn't want to be tracked by cameras but they were. If top Russian agents can be then probably most other people can be too. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/salisbury-novichok-suspect-name-anatoliy-chepiga-gru-poison-death-skripal-sturgess-a8556441.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/salisbury-novich... >the ultimate aim of these ubiquitous surveillance systems isn't really reducing crime, but social engineering In the UK we've had fairly ubiquitous surveillance systems for a while. In practice the uses have been reducing crime and doing people for minor traffic offences, including me - they uploaded a nice video of me turning right in spite of a no right turn sign, rather to my surprise. I've noticed no social engineering - maybe that's to come?
- ams6110 8y ago
  Technology to produce fairly convincing fake videos is already mainstream, and will only get better. For how much longer will video "evidence" be considered proof of anything?
  - tim333 8y ago
    I guess most evidence can be tampered. A lot of CCTV footage is no good as evidence because it's too fuzzy but if you can figure who did it then you can get other kinds of evidence, stolen goods etc.
- Hnrobert42 8y ago
  1. The correlation between surveillance increase and crime decrease does not prove causation. 2. As noted in the article video survelliance is not the same as facial recognition. The latter is far more powerful.

by sveme 8y ago

coldtea 8y ago

>Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that. Tons of political activists (and of course tons of criminals too) have been caught by way simpler and easier to trick methods.

dmos62 8y ago

> Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that I wouldn't be so sure. How well can you control your stance or manner of walking for example? Someone (human) trained to differentiate authors of handwritten text can often still do so even if an author is actively trying to write differently. I think ML is great for comparing these highly subtle traits.

odessacubbage 8y ago
a wheelchair seems like an easy bypass, albeit one with very specific use.
- dmos62 8y ago
  I can see all subversives having wheelchairs in not-so-distant future.
  - xkcd-sucks 8y ago
    Heelys! Never underestimate the power of fads and fashion
- Spare_account 8y ago
  Crutches, gait-modifying shoes, roller-skates There are lots of options
sveme 8y ago
Admittedly haven't explored this myself, but I would expect some insert in my shoes to significantly alter my gait. When I received orthopedic soles, these changed my whole stance and gait. Heck, if there's some twist in my socks, my stance and gait are changed as well. Curious to learn more how well gait recognition algorithms can remove these effects from their prediction.
F_r_k 8y ago
> how to control your stance or manner Quite "easy". Put a pebble in your shoe, or some scotch tape on your skin. You'll behave differently > Someone (human) trained to differentiate authors of handwritten text can often still do so even if an author is actively trying to write differently. That was never proven. Please cite a (good) source or I'll take it to be false
- rqs 8y ago
  Time to bring up this educational video: https://youtu.be/JASUsVY5YJ8?t=280 https://youtu.be/JASUsVY5YJ8?t=280
- dmos62 8y ago
  > Please cite a source. I can't, though I think you could argue about it deductively. > That was never proven. I guess you can't provide a source either :) > Put a pebble in your shoe, or some scotch tape on your skin. If someone you know well did that, would you be able to differentiate his limp from someone else's? I am sure you could. I think it's intuitive that our "limp" betrays features of our normal behaviour.

Inu 8y ago

> Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that. But if the system is not able to assign a face to a specific identity, it might immediately mark them as "suspicious". You'd have to bypass the system by really putting on the appearance of a face within the database.

KineticLensman 8y ago
Yes, someone with unknown identity, using a burner phone (or no phone) and only spending cash is going to stand out. State actors or suitably competent criminals may be able to use fake personas though.

titzer 8y ago

> There might be a race between the recognition software and the circumvention technology I wanna see someone successfully circumvent scent-based tracking. A dog has a sense of smell a million times more sensitive than a human and can track people over miles, even when a trail is days old. Imagine a network of 100,000 passive scent trackers as sensitive as dog noses, hooked up to the same centralized AI and recognition system. With a single high-confidence hit, they can localize you. If you're on foot, you're not getting very far in any reasonable time frame. We don't stand a chance. Sitting ducks, as it were. You just better hope to God (or the AI, apparently) you're never a target of this system, inadvertently or intentionally, because that race is over, and humans lost.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>A dog has a sense of smell a million times more sensitive than a human and can track people over miles, even when a trail is days old. Dogs don't work very well in urban areas and there's plenty of tricks to throw dogs off your trail.
- kbos87 8y ago
  Even in rural areas, getting in a car usually means the end of where a dog can track someone.
- titzer 8y ago
  I did not mean literally using dogs, but passive sensors installed, e.g. in lampposts. I'd like to see your tricks for dealing with 100,000 such sensors, one on every street corner. (also: https://www.canidae.com/blog/2015/10/can-you-throw-off-a-tracking-dogs-scent-with-pepper/ https://www.canidae.com/blog/2015/10/can-you-throw-off-a-tra... "In fact, Adam found that it was basically impossible to throw off the scent of a Bloodhound. He crossed a 100 foot wide, waist high river. He changed clothes, poured cologne and coffee on himself, threw smelly fish along the trail and used scent enzyme erasers to try to eliminate his scent.") May the odds be ever in your favor!
  - myrloc 8y ago

westpfelia 8y ago

"Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist" Or just someone that doesnt want to be tracked by everyone..

tootie 8y ago

> circumvention technology Like hats, glasses and beards?

nine_k 8y ago

It may happen that the approaches usable against automatic facial detectors would be pretty noticeable for humans around [1], thus rendering them pretty hard to use in practice, and also a target of anti-facial-recognition-paint recognition algorithms. [1] https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=dazzle+paint+face+facial+recognition https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=dazzle+paint+face+f...

eiaoa 8y ago

> Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that. There might be a race between the recognition software and the circumvention technology, but a dedicated individual will always be able to avoid that. One issue is disseminating the knowledge needed to defeat such systems. I'm sure the CIA and KGB have manuals and training programs to teach those skills [1], but I'm not sure if the information is publicly available in a readily accessible form (e.g. not spread in small pieces among 100 books). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JASUsVY5YJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JASUsVY5YJ8

zabana 8y ago

Genuine question, what is a terrorist ? It seems to be a very fluid definition these days. Anybody can be deemed a terrorist by any establishment. Also, this kind of thinking reinforces the whole "Well, I don't mind being watched by government agencies because I have nothing to hide" reaction, and it's quite frankly worriying. I'm open to discuss this further though

c0nfused 8y ago
The generally accepted definitions center around the use of violence to incite political change or polticial pressure by nonstate actors. Word in varies but that's the general gist. I know that the word gets thrown around a bunch, but it's a pretty simple idea. There is some controversy about if a state can be a terrorist, but typically we just call it state sponsored terrorism and move on.
iamnothere 8y ago
2000 definition: someone who blows things up for political reasons. 2018 definition: someone who makes angry posts on social media. I'm exaggerating a bit, but it's headed in that direction. If you want to see something truly worrying, look up the handful of idiots trying to promote the notion of "stochastic terrorism". The gist is that non-illegal statements which somehow get interpreted by lone nuts as incitement to violence should be categorized as a form of terrorism. Basically, they're hoping to criminalize angry rhetoric that stops well short of calls to violence. The good news is that they've been flogging this idea for a long time (pre-2016) and it still isn't really gaining ground.

tim333 8y ago

>Someone that does not want to be tracked ... will always be able to do that. I'm sure the Russians doing the Sailsbury attacks didn't want to be tracked by cameras but they were. If top Russian agents can be then probably most other people can be too. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/salisbury-novichok-suspect-name-anatoliy-chepiga-gru-poison-death-skripal-sturgess-a8556441.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/salisbury-novich... >the ultimate aim of these ubiquitous surveillance systems isn't really reducing crime, but social engineering In the UK we've had fairly ubiquitous surveillance systems for a while. In practice the uses have been reducing crime and doing people for minor traffic offences, including me - they uploaded a nice video of me turning right in spite of a no right turn sign, rather to my surprise. I've noticed no social engineering - maybe that's to come?

ams6110 8y ago
Technology to produce fairly convincing fake videos is already mainstream, and will only get better. For how much longer will video "evidence" be considered proof of anything?
- tim333 8y ago
  I guess most evidence can be tampered. A lot of CCTV footage is no good as evidence because it's too fuzzy but if you can figure who did it then you can get other kinds of evidence, stolen goods etc.
Hnrobert42 8y ago
1. The correlation between surveillance increase and crime decrease does not prove causation. 2. As noted in the article video survelliance is not the same as facial recognition. The latter is far more powerful.