Japan’s National Institute of Informatics has developed glasses that can block facial recognition systems from scanning the wearer. Called the PrivacyVisor, the glasses basically look like sunglasses in shape and are being prepared for mass market distribution.
The glasses do their work via a special material – which NII has declined to identify – that reflects and absorbs light in ways that obscure the image of the wearer’s face on camera. Images of the glasses indicated that while they adhere to a pretty standard shape in terms of contemporary trends, they appear to use a kind of camouflage-patterned mesh over the lenses. According to Popular Science, the glasses have been proven 90 percent effective at thwarting smartphone-based facial recognition systems.
That will come as good news to those consumers who are disturbed by the growing preponderance of facial recognition systems and their ability to capture user data in public settings. But it will also be disturbing the many security experts who increasingly rely on facial recognition technology to fight crime and to offer protection via advanced surveillance; if such technology were to become widespread, (and if it were proven effective against more advanced biometrics systems) it could lead to blind spots in biometric identification systems like the kind recently used to protect US President Obama on his trip to India.
Source: Popular Science
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August 10, 2015 – by Alex Perala
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