from Hacker News

Through a Face Scanner Darkly

by bmac27 on 2/1/14, 3:40 PM with 39 comments

• by dredmorbius on 2/1/14, 11:50 PM

  Perhaps this fashion trend will resurface:

  http://news.discovery.com/history/art-history/venice-masks-1...

  In the 17th century, Brown said noblemen, patrician women, and other wealthy individuals began to wear masks and cloaks throughout the city. "This custom reached its apogee in the 18th century, as you can see in paintings by Pietro Longhi," Brown told Discovery News. She explained, "Masks and cloaks allowed one to move about the city anonymously, and thus offered considerable protection, as with the chador in the Islamic world. They also allowed women to frequent dubious places of recreation, such as gambling casinos, without compromising their respectability." She added, "It seems as if the upper class all wandered around in public space incognito in that period (the 18th century)."

• by plg on 2/1/14, 5:39 PM

  As is the case with FB, Twitter, and the other social networks, young people will not see a problem with this, at least while they're young. As they grow older and live their lives, and have medical problems, have brushes with the law, have problems at work, etc etc, and more information is collected, they will realize one day that the sum total of the profile now collected about them, in the cloud, is suddenly having a genuine real impact on their lives... and it will be too late. Years too late.

• by GuiA on 2/1/14, 6:18 PM

  "It’s much easier to meet interesting new people when we can simply look at someone, see their Facebook, review their LinkedIn page, or maybe even see their dating-site profile."

  How sad.

• by Silhouette on 2/1/14, 4:35 PM

  Well, if there was ever any doubt that technology like Google Glass encourages creepy mass surveillance and that powerful new privacy laws are overdue, I guess there isn't any more.

  As far as I can see, the path this kind of technology leads us down is only likely to end one of two ways:

  1. We develop a more open and forgiving society that acknowledges everyone has faults and treats everyone fairly as the person they are today.

  2. We create a society where every time you leave your home, or even in your own home, you constantly have to guard every little thing you say or do, including giving up all kinds of otherwise useful or enjoyable activities that might (justifiably or otherwise) reflect unfavourably on you in the future to someone whose opinion matters at the time.

  Sadly, while there might be many people in the world who would both enjoy and respect the first option, it's not really an option at all right now, because there are also a lot of people in the world who will exploit personal information at the expense of the subject. Sometimes that is simply because they aren't very nice themselves. Sometimes it's for more indirect reasons like the way our societies have set up commercial incentives for businesses.

  As long as everything from human nature to our economic systems are stacked against the transparency/fairness outcome, maybe it's best if we don't go too far down that path. This seems like a great example of the saying that just because we can do something, it doesn't mean we should.

• by drpgq on 2/1/14, 5:03 PM

  My advice as a research scientist at company that makes face recognition software: big, dark sunglasses.

• by ItendToDisagree on 2/1/14, 3:55 PM

  ... Suddenly 'Groucho Glasses' became a standard addition to every outfit.

  That is a fashion change I could agree with!

  Edit: Combine with LEDs for extra fun!

• by asnyder on 2/2/14, 1:55 AM

  Some interesting related pieces:

  * http://www.refinery29.com/2014/01/60361/nametag

  * http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/01/09/stalker-friendly-...

  Personally, I think this is very scary, especially since they're planning to make it opt-out, so you're in the results, unless you sign up and opt-out. I'm guessing some legislation is necessary to prevent all out abuse of this sort of technology. There's obviously benefits to this sort of technology, but in my opinion, should be tightly controlled.

• by itg on 2/1/14, 6:43 PM

  I imagine should this take off, clothing/making that thwarts facial detection algorithms will also increase in popularity. see http://cvdazzle.com

• by marquis on 2/1/14, 11:06 PM

  In the future we will DDOS the surveillance systems with realistic looking images of ourselves doing one of every kind of thing, as to blur the boundaries of what is real and what's not.

• by anigbrowl on 2/2/14, 2:48 AM

  Orbeus, a computer-vision company, created a facial-recognition service, called Rekognition, which promises to identify faces, detect emotion, and determine whether or not the subject is attractive.

  That seems like the sort of determination that ought to be made by the wearer...