LowKey cool: This web app will tweak your photos to flummox facial-recognition systems, apparently A group of computer scientists has released a privacy-focused web application to poison people's online images so they confuse commercial facial recognition systems. The application, called LowKey, is intended to protect people from unauthorized surveillance. It's based on an adversarial attack technique developed by …
The way I see it, the underlying problem is people wanting to post their likeness online. Not counting FaceBook, on every online account I use the default outline icon as my profile picture, but FaceBook being what it is, I do actually put up a real picture of myself on all my accounts, albeit not using my real name for any of them, nor do I associate my FaceBook accounts with anyone I actually hang out with in real life. Call me paranoid and all that. The trick is to use a full figure photo, from a distance at a low enough resolution to make facial recognition irrelevant. But, I feel justified, because to (somewhat mis)quote from the Oliver Stone film JFK “…if they can kill the President of the United States, do you think they would think twice about doing a two bit nobody like me?”
HI Lucy itswd,
I think you're addressing the wrong problem with your post, It's not specifically profile pictures being targeted, it's any image on social media.
I'd say your defence is not worth the time it took you to type it.
And If you've got a FB account all your information is already drifting in the wind for anyone with a suitable net to capture.
Perhaps, I should have mentioned, that I have only ever posted the five profile pictures for the five accounts under the imaginary names that I intend to use on a rainy day. The idea being, that one day, I would like to be someone else, and some clever person will search for that someone else on social media and lo and behold, there it will be. Besides those profile pictures, I have never posted anything anywhere ever… But yes, you are quite correct, those FaceBook accounts exist precisely for someone to capture, because they think that they are clever. For instance, if I ever travel to a restrictive country that insists on demanding handing over social media accounts, well, I already have some to hand over…
"It's not specifically profile pictures being targeted, it's any image on social media."
Even that isn't quite accurate - it's any image, full stop. Social media might be one of the bigger sources of pictures of people these days, but it's stil far from the only source. This site has covered in great detail the lengths the likes of Facebook and Google (and they're certainly not the only ones) go to to track people all over the internet, regardless of persmission to do so, and regardless if they even have an account with the company in question.
That's why it's such a big problem. It doesn't matter how paranoid you are about how you set up your profile pictures, but it also doesn't matter how careful you are about what pictures you post at all. As long as other people might be posting pictures of you somewhere, your face is getting into these tracking and recognition systems. You might not have a Facebook account, but have any of your friends ever posted a photo on theirs? Has your face ever appeared in a news article, a company photo, or anything similar? It doesn't matter whether you have a Facebook account or not, your face is on the internet somewhere, and Facebook, along with many others, have already scraped it and filed it away in your permanent record.
If the test database is made of genuine images, where do they come from? On the other hand, if it is made of Lowkey'd images can it match those against other Lowkey'd images of the same person? Or does Lowkey apply a different change to an image every time it encounters it. Not that I really care as I never put my image on a profile anyway.
People must be aware that everything they post potentially becomes public domain, therefore they must intend that anything they post be shared with the wider world (facial recognition or other data harvesting). Totally free advertising for the 'victim', if truth be told. Thank you, Social Media, from us struggling artists.
I'm inclined to believe they *are* aware, but just tend not to understand the potential consequences. I.e. they think things like "no one besides my friends etc will be interested in my stuff", and "the chance of anyone bothering to pick on me is tiny". Such beliefs were reasonable for most of human history, but not today when low-cost automated trawling means that lots of dubious actors can afford to examine, then copy, re-use, or abuse a significant fraction of the stuff posted.
@Rol is right: a bit of work and it will ruin facial recognition but still look OK.
However, it depends on your character. I have been online from before Sir Tim Berners-Lee came up with the whole URL thing, and many years later I still have not found a valid argument for a personal glory page - it's just not me. In the unlikely case the urge would catch up with me, however, I shall rely on https://thispersondoesnotexist.com to generate a face instead of my own.
I wish you all a nice and well imbibed weekend :).
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