Facial recognition has been on our phones for years and is increasingly being implemented in more places. Airports, police investigations and even apps that want to implement it to prove that we are human. More and more systems they want to see our faces and concerns about privacy are increasing. The first invention to protect us from mass surveillance is here and comes in the form of glasses.
ID Guard. It is the name that Zennia company that sells glasses online, has put its new lenses. They have a pink coating that reflects the infrared light used by many facial recognition systems like Apple’s FaceID. When we try to unlock the iPhone with them on, the eyes darken and that means the system is not able to verify the user.
The problem. They count in 404media The problem with this technology is that it only works with systems that use infrared light. That is, we can still be identified through a normal photo. Most facial recognition systems that we can find on the street, for example those at airports or those used by the police, use normal cameras.
New concern. We have been using biometric data to access mobile phones for years. However, unlike the fingerprint, our face is much more accessible and with the emergence of AI, Recognizing each other is easier than ever. There are services like PimEyes or Lenso.ai that recognize faces in just seconds simply from an image. Zenni’s glasses are a response to this new concern, although perhaps they arrive too soon, and they still have to solve the problem of recognition with normal cameras.
Doxing. It is a type of attack in which a person’s private information is revealed. When we talk about mass surveillance we think of systems run by governments and authorities, but it goes beyond that. A “doxing“It is when, for example, someone records you, uploads the video to the networks and identifies you only from your image. We have recent cases such as the infidelity that was revealed by the kiss-cam at a Coldplay concert or that of that man who stole a child’s cap during the US Open.
Video surveillance. There are many countries that have implemented massive video surveillance systems. The country that comes to mind before this mass surveillance thing is Chinabut there are many more places in the world full of cameras. In Europe we have the case of London, which has almost a million cameras installed in its streets. In United States, police are using facial recognition to arrest suspects (and making mistakes) and in The European Union approved the use of facial recognition in 2024 by the authorities.
Image | Karola G, Pexels
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