Unfortunately, its not clear if masks actually stop facial recognition. I think it helps, but not probably not as well as it did before covid.
Yes, agreed, it’s a matter of degrees. It’s chipping away at the identifying information we’re allowing out. It’s sad that it’s being abused for profit, but here we are.
It depends on the mask in this case e.g., a full face mask is going to be more effective than a half face mask. Walking around under a sheet with holes in it will also hamper gait analysis, but then you’re the only one walking around in a sheet.
Edit: the answer is clearly free burqas for all.
Madeleine Stone, of the campaign group Big Brother Watch, is concerned about the slow creep of facial recognition technology.
“It is unacceptable to have police and private companies writing their own rules on the use of such a powerful surveillance technology,” she says. “We urgently need a democratic, lawful approach to the role of facial biometrics in Britain, but so far there hasn’t even been a parliamentary debate on it.”
Glad they devoted 3 whole sentences about this more than halfway down the article /s
Also, no mention of machine learning training bias or false positive rates of the existing technology? There’s so much which could have been fleshed out in this article.
