4 ms·

A replacement for blur could just be black boxes. Seems easy and safe enough.

by _bxg1 6y ago

tornato7 6y ago
Even better, replace the face with Kim-Jong Un and then blur it. When they apply those forensic techniques they'll discover that it was him all along!
Polylactic_acid 6y ago
Make sure they are 100% opacity. A lot of people mess this up and use 90% opacity or similar and the original image can be revealed by messing with the color levels.
- t-writescode 6y ago
  I've doxxed my Reddit username on my Apple phone doing that exact thing. The black marker is not opaque, even after a few stripes over the username. You have to do it many more times.
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    Easier to select an area and delete it from the layer entirely so that a transparent hole is left. Then make sure you cleanup EXIF and other metadata or you may have the original image still in a thumbnail field at reduced fidelity. Free online metadata viewer http://exif.regex.info http://exif.regex.info Powered by FOSS (Perl-based) https://exiftool.org https://exiftool.org
    - girst 6y ago
      Do not keep it transparent! The Gimp for example keeps the underlying colour data, and just sets the opacity to 0. this bug (closed as Expected Behavior) has a demonstration: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/4487 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/4487
      - _bxg1 6y ago
        It blows my mind that there are so many ways to screw up something this simple. Edit: to be clear I meant this as a commentary on the technology, not the people making the mistakes
        Polylactic_acid 6y ago
        I think there is a need for a dedicated image privacy offline program. On a technical level its very easy to preserve privacy, its just the tools people are using were built for other purposes (Non destructive editing is highly desirable in normal cases). All the program has to do is scrub all exif data, have a censor box/brush that is 100% black and rencode the image so there is no remaining unneeded data.
        wool_gather 6y ago
        Good thought; it seems like something the EFF (or maybe the ACLU) would be interested in producing or publishing.
      - Perseids 6y ago
        Is PPM a safe round-trip format to remove all metadata and transparency? I'd like to recommend it to a friend and as far as I know it really only contains RGB as text and has no extensions for exif or similar. But after so many gotchas, as listed here in the thread, I'm somewhat paranoid...
        jstanley 6y ago
        ASCII PPM supports comments, so it is possible that EXIF or other identifying information would get written into the comments by some tool. I have only ever observed PPM comments right at the start of the file, so you could open it in a text editor and remove the comments from the start. Maybe check the very end of the file as well. Binary PPM does not support comments, so that would be a better solution. PPM documentation here, you want possibly P3 or more likely P6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netpbm#File_formats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netpbm#File_formats
jazzyjackson 6y ago
As soon as deepfakes and "thispersondoesnotexist" started happening I wanted a tool that would replace everyone's face with a auto-generated face just so I could do street photography without feeling like I was invading people's right to obscurity
- kickscondor 6y ago
  This is a cool idea. Oh to be a streamer with an auto generated face. Reminds me of A Scanner Darkly.
  - m_eiman 6y ago
    Should be slowly morphing between different faces, maybe 10 minutes or so per transition. Should be fairly unsettling to watch! :D
- shavingspiders 6y ago
  That's a really interesting idea. I'm not sure what the commercial value would be, but the artistic value (and gain in privacy) would be huge. I'm not sure what you'd do about identifying marks like tattoos, but perhaps that isn't the biggest concern when compared to faces. Could you train a model with your own face as a start, and then run your photos through an existing consumer face-swap app? Or perhaps use a celebrities likeness? I wonder how much the visual 'likeness' of a stranger is worth.
  - jb1533063 6y ago
    Commercial value may be for filmmakers who would no longer have to worry about getting waivers from people in the background of live shots. (Not a lawyer.)
    - thr0w__4w4y 6y ago
      Also not a lawyer, and US-based in case it varies by country. Do you know if a waiver is needed in this case? My understanding is that I can walk down a sidewalk, around Disneyland, around a resort, and film anyone / anything in plain sight. (I don't do that, by the way...) In other words, assuming you're not climbing over railings etc., if you can see it with your eyes, you can film it or photograph it. Wonder if anyone here (plenty of legal eagles I'm sure) can confirm this or correct this. We don't need to get bogged down in corner cases & rare exceptions... for example, I think I heard that in some states, if the police ask (demand?) that you stop recording, you have to, otherwise you're in violation of the law... but even as I type that, as an American, it just sounds wrong... but I don't know.

A replacement for blur could just be black boxes. Seems easy and safe enough.

by _bxg1 6y ago

A replacement for blur could just be black boxes. Seems easy and safe enough.

Even better, replace the face with Kim-Jong Un and then blur it. When they apply those forensic techniques they'll discover that it was him all along!

Polylactic_acid 6y ago

Make sure they are 100% opacity. A lot of people mess this up and use 90% opacity or similar and the original image can be revealed by messing with the color levels.

t-writescode 6y ago
I've doxxed my Reddit username on my Apple phone doing that exact thing. The black marker is not opaque, even after a few stripes over the username. You have to do it many more times.
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  Easier to select an area and delete it from the layer entirely so that a transparent hole is left. Then make sure you cleanup EXIF and other metadata or you may have the original image still in a thumbnail field at reduced fidelity. Free online metadata viewer http://exif.regex.info http://exif.regex.info Powered by FOSS (Perl-based) https://exiftool.org https://exiftool.org
  - girst 6y ago
    Do not keep it transparent! The Gimp for example keeps the underlying colour data, and just sets the opacity to 0. this bug (closed as Expected Behavior) has a demonstration: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/4487 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/4487
    - _bxg1 6y ago
      It blows my mind that there are so many ways to screw up something this simple. Edit: to be clear I meant this as a commentary on the technology, not the people making the mistakes
      - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
        I think there is a need for a dedicated image privacy offline program. On a technical level its very easy to preserve privacy, its just the tools people are using were built for other purposes (Non destructive editing is highly desirable in normal cases). All the program has to do is scrub all exif data, have a censor box/brush that is 100% black and rencode the image so there is no remaining unneeded data.
        wool_gather 6y ago
        Good thought; it seems like something the EFF (or maybe the ACLU) would be interested in producing or publishing.
    - Perseids 6y ago
      Is PPM a safe round-trip format to remove all metadata and transparency? I'd like to recommend it to a friend and as far as I know it really only contains RGB as text and has no extensions for exif or similar. But after so many gotchas, as listed here in the thread, I'm somewhat paranoid...
      - jstanley 6y ago
        ASCII PPM supports comments, so it is possible that EXIF or other identifying information would get written into the comments by some tool. I have only ever observed PPM comments right at the start of the file, so you could open it in a text editor and remove the comments from the start. Maybe check the very end of the file as well. Binary PPM does not support comments, so that would be a better solution. PPM documentation here, you want possibly P3 or more likely P6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netpbm#File_formats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netpbm#File_formats

jazzyjackson 6y ago

As soon as deepfakes and "thispersondoesnotexist" started happening I wanted a tool that would replace everyone's face with a auto-generated face just so I could do street photography without feeling like I was invading people's right to obscurity

kickscondor 6y ago
This is a cool idea. Oh to be a streamer with an auto generated face. Reminds me of A Scanner Darkly.
- m_eiman 6y ago
  Should be slowly morphing between different faces, maybe 10 minutes or so per transition. Should be fairly unsettling to watch! :D
shavingspiders 6y ago
That's a really interesting idea. I'm not sure what the commercial value would be, but the artistic value (and gain in privacy) would be huge. I'm not sure what you'd do about identifying marks like tattoos, but perhaps that isn't the biggest concern when compared to faces. Could you train a model with your own face as a start, and then run your photos through an existing consumer face-swap app? Or perhaps use a celebrities likeness? I wonder how much the visual 'likeness' of a stranger is worth.
- jb1533063 6y ago
  Commercial value may be for filmmakers who would no longer have to worry about getting waivers from people in the background of live shots. (Not a lawyer.)
  - thr0w__4w4y 6y ago
    Also not a lawyer, and US-based in case it varies by country. Do you know if a waiver is needed in this case? My understanding is that I can walk down a sidewalk, around Disneyland, around a resort, and film anyone / anything in plain sight. (I don't do that, by the way...) In other words, assuming you're not climbing over railings etc., if you can see it with your eyes, you can film it or photograph it. Wonder if anyone here (plenty of legal eagles I'm sure) can confirm this or correct this. We don't need to get bogged down in corner cases & rare exceptions... for example, I think I heard that in some states, if the police ask (demand?) that you stop recording, you have to, otherwise you're in violation of the law... but even as I type that, as an American, it just sounds wrong... but I don't know.