Opinion Eigenface chic

As privacy concerns grow over the rampant use of facial recognition technology on the street, and in shops and private spaces, the anti-face movement is catching up.

As privacy concerns grow over the rampant use of facial recognition technology on the street, and in shops and private spaces, the anti-face movement is catching up. It is a technology problem, and the solution was expected to be technological. Who would have expected the perfect hack to arrive in the guise of fashion? This week, as London Fashion Week closed, the Dazzle Club took a walk in London’s King’s Cross, wearing war paint that anonymised them in plain sight in the heart of the world’s most camera-dense city.

The name is obviously a grateful nod to the technologist and artist Adam Harvey’s CV Dazzle project, which exploits weaknesses in the OpenCV library for real-time computer vision. Facial recognition depends on Eigenfaces, the set of vector maps used in facial recognition, which are sensitive to factors like the distance between the eyes, and their relation to the corners of the mouth. With present technology, covering part of the face or wearing shades does not help. OpenCV simply works with what it can see, and ignores your pathetic attempts at concealment.

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But weird makeup and hairdos which distort the apparent proportions of the face work. CV Dazzle is a set of blazes, patterns and cosmetics worn on the face to confuse cameras. But designers aren’t satisfied with just thwarting facial recognition. They are culture jamming, too, choking the system with junk data and noise. The raddest strategy is clothes printed with the faces of celebrities, which divert the cameras from your face. They see Barack Obama, Janis Joplin, Che Guevara, even Elvis himself. They see everyone except you. As cameras become pervasive in India, we need local flavour. The nation where political workers wear the face of their leader also deserve camouflage gear. We’ll take the Netaji T-shirt, thank you.