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by somebodynew 1369 days ago
It's only following people who posted their own photos voluntarily in this particular implementation, but consider the next incremental step for this same approach: a website where you upload a photo of anyone's face and get a map/trail of every public photo/video posted by someone else where that face appears in the background for the last month. Now you're not just finding the subject of a voluntarily portrait in security camera footage from a public place, but finding anywhere that any private person has gone in any populated area where anyone else is taking photos for social media.

How many involuntary social media photo and video backgrounds do you think someone living in NYC or SF is identifiable in every day? I would venture to guess, enough to track a lot of their life. The only thing I see stopping anyone from making this site today is the challenges in scraping large quantities of public data from social media sites. Once you have the data, the rest seems like a solved problem.
2 comments
jrockway 1368 days ago
My favorite part of the pandemic is it being socially acceptable to wear a face mask. I enjoy the break from surveillance.
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lilsoso 1368 days ago
Masks increasingly help less and less, for example see:

https://www.datasciencecentral.com/sunglasses-and-face-mask-...

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bradknowles 1366 days ago
The facial recognition is not the real problem.

The real problem is things like gait recognition. Most people already cover some or all of their hips, legs, feet, etc.... But it's hard to hide the way that you walk, regardless of what clothing you wear. And even if you can fake it for a short period of time, it's hard to be consistent about how you fake it over a long period of time.

When you can accurately identify the person who is completely covered head to toe, then it becomes a lot harder to hide.

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Anunayj 1368 days ago
Gosh yup! It's incredibly creepy but unfortunately today is a unstoppable reality, specially in high surveillance states.

You really cannot expect any privacy outside anywhere, cameras are basically everywhere now, possibly broadcasting the information to the world.

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