this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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Also don't wear any clothing you bought from a unique Etsy store (or any store you physically visited and paid with a card).
The clothes you wear to the protest should also be bought from a thrift store that you visited without your cellphone and paid for the clothing in cash.
Otherwise, yes, your clothing purchases are tracked, and the young lady who torched a cop car during the George Floyd protests was literally found by the FBI searching Etsy purchase records for people who had bought that shirt.
https://www.inquirer.com/news/lore-blumenthal-philly-protests-george-floyd-sentencing-20220728.html
Other options are facial recognition defeating clothing like this:
https://www.dezeen.com/2023/02/07/cap_able-facial-recognition-blocking-clothing/
Or this:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2496686/anti-cctv-reflectacle-glasses-will-let-criminals-evade-the-law-and-activists-dodge-the-surveillance-state/
EDIT:
But neither of those help when we're dealing with stuff like Gait Analysis.
For help with that, we must turn to the Ministry...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV2ViNJFZC8
Cory Doctorow has a solution: put some pebbles in your shoes, that will change the way you walk right away.
I remember reading a book about this hacker student kid that would do that to sneak out of the school because they had gait recognition cameras. Can’t remember the name of the book though…
Little Brother I think.
Oh haha yep that’s it! Guess I shoulda tried googling Cory Doctorow first. Thank you!
I aughtta give that another read
Seems like solid advice, thanks!
I've had this vague recollection of that book for over a decade and could never find it despite multiple search attempts and even requests on tip-of-my-tongue esque forums. I just could not remember any useful specific information about it for the life of me.
To make this discovery from a random thread so organically is incredible.
Many thanks to you and @[email protected] both.
Oh nice! Happy to have helped! To be honest there’s not much else I can remember from the book either haha.
You're not alone - what I did remember was completely incorrect. I would have sworn that the cover was burgundy with the title in black lettering. Also I had thought the whole time it was called Big Brother - which was quite the wrench in the machine when it came to searching online. Wrong on both counts. Goes to show how fallable memory is.
My library didn't have a copy but the author has it available for free on his website in a few different formats. I'm looking forward to reading it - it's a good deal longer than I'd thought. Thanks again.
Yeah, the gait analysis is where I am truly fucked because I'm visibly disabled (and have gone to protests where i have been threatened with arrest, but evaded so far). I have been thinking about using my wheelchair at more protests though, so that might be able to fuck it up in the future.
Or everyone just needs to stick a rock in their shoe, or wear one shoes that has a bit of a platform.
I wish the facial rec-blocking clothes weren't too expensive for most protesters
I could retain a subpar attorney with that
[checks site, certain that these will only be somewhat expensive] fucking WHAT
Too lazy, how many do they cost?
Cheapest I found is $400 for a piece.
It would be incredible if there was a knitting pattern for sweaters like this available online somewhere
Not to mention if you get hit with OC spray, you’re not going to want to keep them anyhow. That shit is meant to get into and onto anything you touch. Getting it out again, is a pain in the ass.
I highly suspect the "adverserial attack" clothes are gonna work, it seems more like they are just taking advantage of a buzz word and it goes against not wearing easily identifiable clothes (you will be one of a handful of people wearing your stylish riot sweater). Carry a concealed ski mask with you and wear it when you need to and keep it hidden when not (so you don't get easily identified as a rioter and become a target when alone).
I think they work, but will quickly be defeated. Facial recognition is nothing more than advanced pattern recognition. This clothing works by confusing the pattern the AI is trained to recognize. That may work with current models, but all it takes is to train the AI on what this adversarial clothing looks like so it can differentiate it from actual faces.
Assuming they get you on video, it would be trivial to crop out the clothes and give the algorithm only your face.
That's certainly true. I think the more effective method is using makeup/face paint instead. But any of these methods are designed to confuse AI, they fall apart as soon as there's any human intervention.
you said
but did you mean
I highly suspect the "adverserial attack" clothes AREN'T gonna work
❓❔❓❔
Please don't use those sweaters thinking you're not identifiable by face recognition. Making an AI think you're an animal is good for walking around the city. The second a human is reviewing the footage they're going to correct the AI and go straight to your face.