AVG designing glasses to thwart facial recognition

[Lagmonster]

A story is making the rounds about the development by AVG Security of a pair of 'invisibility glasses', designed to prevent facial recognition software from being able to identify your face.

I'm sure there are lots of anti-surveillance-society people who would like a pair of these pronto. The only thing I'm curious about is whether or not businesses could actively force people to remove the glasses. Like, say, a bank. Story link below:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2477707,00.asp

[The Grim Squeaker]

Pff.
This doesn't even hide distance between eyes (one of the simplest, strongest features for identifying faces belonging to individuals).

[Iroscato]

So...instead of trying to directly identify people through facial recognition, you switch to 'find the silly cunt with glowsticks strapped to his face?'
Genius!

[Themightytom]

oh this is better than tin foil hats.

[SpottedKitty]

I'm disappointed, it doesn't have the big nose or the dubious moustache.

[Terralthra]

So...instead of trying to directly identify people through facial recognition, you switch to 'find the silly cunt with glowsticks strapped to his face?'
Genius!

Did you read the article? The glowing bits only glow in infra-red. Visible to cameras, not humans. The other option is retro-reflectivity, which tries to reflect everything back at the same angle it came in on, which will only affect flash photography.

[Iroscato]

So...instead of trying to directly identify people through facial recognition, you switch to 'find the silly cunt with glowsticks strapped to his face?'
Genius!

Did you read the article? The glowing bits only glow in infra-red. Visible to cameras, not humans. The other option is retro-reflectivity, which tries to reflect everything back at the same angle it came in on, which will only affect flash photography.

...Damn hangover.
Still bloody silly though.

[aerius]

I'm disappointed, it doesn't have the big nose or the dubious moustache.

[salm]

Still bloody silly though.

Do you think this particular approach is silly or the general concept of diguising yourself to face recognition technology?

[bilateralrope]

Many cellphone camera sensors have an infrared filter strong enough to cut off any wavelengths beyond the visible spectrum," AVG noted.

In other words, the means to defeat the infrared LEDs already exists. Making them doomed to fail if they ever get used widely enough to be a problem for face recognition. Assuming face recognition algorithms can't account for it.

Though the real silly part would be if there is something unique to each pair of these glasses that cameras can detect.

[salm]

They say that this is an early prototype. The silly part is expecting it to be a perfectly finished product.

A lot of cameras like older cctv cameras or webcams a lot of businesses use to monitor their business might not be equipped with a mechanism to defeat the LEDs.
Camouflage doesn´t have to be perfect. It has to make it expensive for the opponent to circumvent.

Researching means to conceal yourself to mass surveillance does make sense in my opinion.

[Lagmonster]

Bear in mind that the tech doesn't exist to allow criminals to operate with impunity, but a market does exist for a product like this, even if it only works some of the time.

For example, remember that thread a while back about stores wanting to set up cameras to scan people as they came in so as to target them with ads based on their age, gender, and so forth? There were people there who felt offended by the practice. Something which doesn't obscure your identity to humans, but thwarts scanning software, would give such people peace of mind when in public.