Faced with the multiplication of revolts denouncing racism and police violence, the American authorities intensify the surveillance of the demonstrators. Photos taken by them or by the police are likely to be exploited: thanks to facial recognition technology, individuals can be identified. But digital tools have recently been put in place to help protesters remain anonymous and avoid reprisals, reports the specialized media TechCrunch .
I created an iOS shortcut for those who are out there protesting. This shortcut will blur faces and make a copy of the photo — which will have zero metadata
Feel free to donate: money is for server & software costs
Cashapp: $ noahconkhttps: //t.co/namAOuVJ40#BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/ QeaMsSco1Q
These devices, which have been flowering for barely a week, have been developed by several developers to be applied to the photos circulating on social networks. One of them, Noah Conk, created a shortcut for the iPhone. It automatically blurs all the faces it detects in a photo. This software is based on Amazon's facial recognition device.
Hide "recognizable items"
Sam Loeschen has created “censr”, a similar tool but which acts in real time on photos taken with an iPhone XR or a more recent model. The application uses augmented reality and offers another functionality: the erasure of the metadata attached to the file, which makes it possible to identify the place, date and source of the image.
📣📣 Announcing censr: a simple camera app for protecting your identity!
available for iPhone XR and up
distributing to protestors and press through TestFlight. Send me a DM for the link! pic.twitter.com/J1Znd2ZKqN
The deletion of this data and the blurring of faces are also part of the actions proposed by an app developed by Everest Pipkin. This privacy protection tool can also hide "recognizable items" and "don't send the data anywhere," the programmer said on Twitter on May 31. No information is downloaded or stored by the device, which works on both smartphone and computer.
i built a tool for quickly scrubbing metadata from images and selectively blurring faces and identifiable features. it runs on a phone or computer, and doesn't send info anywhere.
process your images so that you and others are safe: https: //t.co/GbQu5ZweDq pic.twitter.com/jKjABTgPRX
Beyond the experts, whose tools are often open-source, the big names in digital technology have also started to take an interest in preserving the anonymity of their users. The messaging platform Signal, very popular among the demonstrators, said this Wednesday on its blog to offer its own integrated feature for blurring faces.
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