Makeup as low-tech measure against automated face recognition?

[Tim May]

On Thursday, April 24, 2003, at 07:36  AM, Steve Schear wrote:
>
> Despite the widespread municipal bans against wearing masks in public 
> (except during Halloween), its still widely legal to wear a motorcycle 
> helmet with faceplate in place outdoors.  I've never heard of anyone 
> hassled for wearing one when the didn't just step off a bike.

With SARS, a large surgical mask covers nearly all of the 
identification markers. Add a pair of sunglasses or tinted eyeglasses 
and nearly nothing remains.

However, the long-term implications are clear: computers become so 
cheap and cameras so ubiquitous that public movements are trackable. 
Many have written on this already. It's a signal detection problem, and 
the odds favor the trackers.

(Which may cause more people to limit public purchases, to limit public 
shopping. Which can help crypto in private places, where the reverse of 
the above is the case: technology favors the person trying to  hide, 
not the watchers. Crypto wins here.)


--Tim May
""Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who 
approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but 
downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined." 
--Patrick Henry


--Tim May
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can 
only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves 
money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority 
always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the 
Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over 
loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship." --Alexander 
Fraser Tyler