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Faces and biometrics are finding a formidable opponent in one of the positive externalities of COVID: Masking. Masking has effectively been normalized in the

Faces and biometrics are finding a formidable opponent in one of the positive externalities of COVID: Masking. Masking has effectively been normalized in the western world thanks to COVID. Masking is a huge win for a free society. Before COVID, it was actually illegal to hide your face in some US States and many countries [1] Mask + sunglasses, and you should be effectively anonymous in public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-mask_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-mask_law

frabbit 5y ago
It's interesting how the most apparently compelling arguments that were made against people wearing masks turn out to be false in practice. I can think of two categories: 1) the claim that the wearing of masks would impede law enforcement, including the passing of statues especially against masks on demonstrations 2) the claim that Muslim women wearing full religious head coverings could not be tolerated in public spaces because it was obvious that it would make it impossible to judge the mood or other psychologically important signals normally exchanged in public None of this seems to have been true. Sure, there probably is some small validity to some aspects of those claims, but they seem to have been hugely exaggerated.
stef25 5y ago
Finally someone brings this up. Here in Belgium the rules around Islamic headdress were addresses by a law that says nobody can cover their face in public except during carnival and when riding a motorbike (full face helmet), thereby avoiding any explicit references to religion (unlike in France where it caused a sh*tstorm) I was waiting for the anti mask crowd to challenge mask wearing in court by citing this law. No idea if it's been amended or not. But it definitely used to be illegal to cover one's face.
jjulius 5y ago
>Mask + sunglasses, and you should be effectively anonymous in public. Until you start looking at things such as height + weight + gait.
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  Yeah, I feel like people either overlook or underestimate the uniqueness of a person's gait. I feel the only issue with it is collecting the information on it, as it requires more than just a picture.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    What if I put sharp-ish rocks in my shoes?
    - xboxnolifes 5y ago
      Sure, if you change the rocks daily, while wearing a mask, and having sunglasses on. However, the context was around how mask wearing and eye covering is fairly normalized at the moment, not about how people started enjoying putting rocks in their shoes.
- scohesc 5y ago
  Would something like gait be easy to fake - just being aware of how you walk... Putting a thumbtack in your right foot, or something along those lines?
- stef25 5y ago
  Still a bit more difficult to implement than facial recognition, which is now trivial to set up with AWS Rekognition. Even Photoprism does a great job.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Facial recognition for bucketing photos is much easier than for biometric security. Both might still be easy these days (I wouldn’t know, I am not as in the loop for AI as I’d like to be), but the former was good enough at least a decade before people seriously used the latter.

frabbit 5y ago

It's interesting how the most apparently compelling arguments that were made against people wearing masks turn out to be false in practice. I can think of two categories: 1) the claim that the wearing of masks would impede law enforcement, including the passing of statues especially against masks on demonstrations 2) the claim that Muslim women wearing full religious head coverings could not be tolerated in public spaces because it was obvious that it would make it impossible to judge the mood or other psychologically important signals normally exchanged in public None of this seems to have been true. Sure, there probably is some small validity to some aspects of those claims, but they seem to have been hugely exaggerated.

stef25 5y ago

Finally someone brings this up. Here in Belgium the rules around Islamic headdress were addresses by a law that says nobody can cover their face in public except during carnival and when riding a motorbike (full face helmet), thereby avoiding any explicit references to religion (unlike in France where it caused a sh*tstorm) I was waiting for the anti mask crowd to challenge mask wearing in court by citing this law. No idea if it's been amended or not. But it definitely used to be illegal to cover one's face.

jjulius 5y ago

>Mask + sunglasses, and you should be effectively anonymous in public. Until you start looking at things such as height + weight + gait.

xboxnolifes 5y ago
Yeah, I feel like people either overlook or underestimate the uniqueness of a person's gait. I feel the only issue with it is collecting the information on it, as it requires more than just a picture.
- jhgb 5y ago
  What if I put sharp-ish rocks in my shoes?
  - xboxnolifes 5y ago
    Sure, if you change the rocks daily, while wearing a mask, and having sunglasses on. However, the context was around how mask wearing and eye covering is fairly normalized at the moment, not about how people started enjoying putting rocks in their shoes.
scohesc 5y ago
Would something like gait be easy to fake - just being aware of how you walk... Putting a thumbtack in your right foot, or something along those lines?
stef25 5y ago
Still a bit more difficult to implement than facial recognition, which is now trivial to set up with AWS Rekognition. Even Photoprism does a great job.
- ben_w 5y ago
  Facial recognition for bucketing photos is much easier than for biometric security. Both might still be easy these days (I wouldn’t know, I am not as in the loop for AI as I’d like to be), but the former was good enough at least a decade before people seriously used the latter.