Digital privacy seems quite straightforward, because your digital devices are environments you more or less can have complete control over if you want to. But when you’re out and about, it’s a much more uncontrolled environment. There are cameras everywhere.
I wear face masks everywhere for a combo of protecting myself from illness and privacy. But the limitation is social acceptability. If anything good came out of covid it’s the normalisation of face masks, but you are far from unidentifiable if your only face covering is a covid mask. We’re lucky that sunglasses and hoodies on their own are fairly normal, but all of the above in combination would draw attention to you. And it’s definitely not socially acceptable to walk around in a balaclava.
The other thing is forensic data. If you don’t wear gloves, you’ll leave fingerprints everywhere, and hair too. I suppose wearing gloves is not particularly seen as weird or suspicious, but it just seems like there are a lot of considerations and challenges with preventing the state from knowing your every move when you leave the house.
What considerations do you make for IRL privacy, if any?
(Not particularly interested in “I don’t care about IRL privacy so I don’t do anything”—that’s fine and your choice, but ofc this question is aimed towards those who do care)
I wear a giant Juggernaut-style helmet
That’ll help with keeping a low profile. I personally go for a red flashing clown nose, and triggers in my shoes which set off a loud explosion sound with every step. The speaker is in my ridiculously tall top hat.
Nice! You’ll basically be invisible
Tbh I’d be trying to avoid eye contact so this may kinda work by making them seem unstable and insane. I’d remember them as crazy guys but wouldn’t be able to identify them without their outfit.
Nothing. The effort required to make a meaningful impact against this type of threat is way beyond my threat level.
So uh what kind of threat level are we talking about here
Barely related, but I did see this recently and had laugh
Why can’t you drive off?
It was at a gas station pump. It’s about pumping gas and leaving without paying.
[Loud spinning tire sounds]
[dramatic music]
[person speaking english]
[different person speaking english through a phone speaker]
[beat drops]
They should make a sunscreen or moisturiser that shields you from face recognition and fingerprints, like those covers on license plates that make em shine on police cameras
a sunscreen or moisturiser that shields you from face recognition
Gotta say, I don’t think most peoples’ threat models make worrying about IRL privacy a concern, but that’s obviously not the point.
For the record, I don’t use any of these techniques myself, it’s just stuff I’ve read.
For facial recognition, a lot of CCTV cameras don’t have IR filters, and can be blinded with Infrared LEDs, so there have been some promising experiments with shoving a bunch of them into hats. You’ll glow real bright in any footage, but they won’t be able to see your face.
Beyond that, there’s always prosthetics (think like what is used in movies) to alter your facial characteristics.
All that said, I believe the main way of identifying individuals in camera footage now is by gait analysis. Supposedly a rock in your shoe can change it enough to not match up between different footage.
You’d also want to ditch your phone or put it in a signal blocking bag, as it can be uniquely identified by the saved wifi SSIDs that it tries to connect to, and by its bluetooth unique identifier (might just be the MAC address), that can be tracked by low energy bluetooth beacons (how stores track customer movement within and how most places did covid exposure tracing with the apps).
As far as fingerprints go, maybe a light layer of superglue on your fingertips to disrupt the print patterns? That’s a complete guess though.
What are the chances that an IR LED hat would get you run over by a self-driving vehicle? We already know they don’t deal well with anything out of the ordinary, and they routinely slam into trucks and barriers.
My wife wears rubber gloves to the doctor. I have thought about getting some light butler type gloves for riding the train and such.
This is one of the greatest things that came out of the pandemic, though. Its no longer weird to walk around in a face mask. Its normalized in almost every country, instead of just Asians.
Everywhere except in the USA’s Republican states. It’s an unforgiveable sin to be seen with a mask on there for stupid reasons.
Tin foil balaclava.
cash
not much I can do about CCTV (without breaching important social norms)
(without breaching important social norms)
But why would anyone who cares about privacy consider them more important?
because human being
Because breaching important social norms does the opposite of privacy, it draws attention to you.
That’s weird.
Because that can make you stand out even more.
As an example: No point using high contrast makeup to break up the patterns of your face from facial recognition if all they have to do is look for the guy with wacky makeup on in their footage.
Have fun not getting stopped by the police if you walk around with a balaclava, especially if you’re Black.
Their problem. We’re activists. We fight for rights, not compromise them.
What do you mean? Getting stopped by the police is a big deal. They can arrest you—in which case they will obtain your details, take your fingerprints, etc, which is antithetical to privacy—and they can do worse than arrest you too if they feel like it.
Well it highly depends on the country in question
In what country does being detained by the police not lead to them identifying you? The police are highly unlikely to release someone if they don’t know who they are. I think it’s fairly global that detainees who refuse to give their name to the police will at least be kept until the police have identified them.
The government already has your data because it’s how it works. Detention for identification is not bad and you can just bring your ID with you (that you should do all the time tbh) in case the police ask questions. Still they won’t like follow you so there is some improvement as long as you don’t let the cameras track you exactly to your home address.
In US pig will kill you and nothing will be done about it.
Most people are not willing to take that shot esp if you are in a lower social economic position.
Not surprised at all tbh and of course it’s usually not worth taking such risk. I was talking about countries where covering your face is allowed.
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I hear a lot about gait detection, but I wonder how widely it is implemented.
Gait detection is also a thing that hiding your face won’t stop. You’d have to just constantly put a rock in different places in your shoes or break a leg LOL
Never even considered this but that makes sense damn. Time to start work on my open source privacy-respecting leg breaking machine
these folks can help and its less invasive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNeeovY4qNU
This laughably does not work unless you’re only walking at night under very specific circumstances.
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Nothing. Simple.
Everything you’re describing is terribly inaccurate.
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Stay in the basement and drink alone.
I love hoodies but a plain cap & a mask is my go to for being in public.
you can use a faraday sleeve/bag for walking around/using public transportation when carrying your phone/devices.
cash, for sure. also, using cash only for transit passes & not linking them to any identifiable accounts.
I love my Kolari shades I picked up when they were running their kickstarter. Fantastic to use indoors and out. https://kolarivision.com/product/kolari-shades-ultra/
Oh and if you have need enough to worry about fingerprints, best to just get rid of them outright and deal with the rather short but uncomfortable recovery for your fingers to heal back over.
Right, I just have to work at the pineapple plantation for 8 more years, then I’ll be set
lol you don’t necessarily need these but any IR reflective materials around or on your face is best. Most of the high resolution facial scanners on the market use some form of UR depth mapping and it screws out all up
