Identity: The fact of being who or what a person or thing is.
–Oxford dictionary
a.
The identity system in daily life is a code of a kind. Our identity is the sum of the roles we take on in different dimensions of our lives—a mother, a teacher, or a
protester. The development of technology and especially the internet expands our “virtual world”, which has gradually become an integral part of our “physical world”. In our cyber lives, we also have diversed identities. We own absolute control over our virtual identities thank to the fact that the messages in the virtual world cannot be easily brought over into the physical one—We can manage our virtual identities without great effort or live with an identity we are not willing or not able to carry in the physical world.
However, managing virtual identities is no longer secured in the era of facial identification. When virtual identities are associated with one of the most important
physical feature—the face—identities in the two different worlds that used to exist parallel to each other will intersect or maybe even cause disturbances from a topological perspective. Imagine seeing advertisements of the product you just purchased earlier online displayed in a shopping mall, being called by your internet nickname at a self-service payment terminal or getting a weird smirk from the customs official after he took a look at your passport The absolute control of information makes our identities transparent. What can we trust then? Those who hold the information of our identities or AI systems? The ”Brave New World” depicted in the book Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell shouldn’t be our future.
b.
The development and application of technology is irreversible. Integrating the virtual world into the physical one has without a doubt brought us great convenience. We are destined to sacrifice privacy for the sake of this convenience. Being deprived of our privacy per facial identification systems, we are forced to look for a moderate way to reclaim our right to control our own identities. The counterpart of the transparency of information is invisibility of identifications. We are adopting a non-AI approach which involves a controllable disguise to mislead AI-systems. We utilize facial identification services without showing our real faces. Our aim is to safeguard our identities in the physical world in a realistic manner..
c.
Mechanism of Facial Identification Systems
1. Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG): Use HOG to to create a simplified programmed image. Make use of this simplified image to identify the part most similar to the HOG codes.
2. Facial landmark estimation: Find the major facial landmarks to identify the head position. Make use of the identified features to distort the image and create a new picture on which the eyes and the mouth stay in the middle.
3. Convolutional Neural Network Training: Put the created picture into the Convolutional Neural Network, where the 128 values can be calculated. Save these 128 values.
4. Comparison with the database: Find the identity information of the person that owns the most similar values.
Design Steps
According to researchers, the modification of facial identification results is easier before the information is brought into the Convolutional Neural Network. Our design therefore focusses on altering the picture which is to be sent into the Network.
1. Scan the face to obtain a 3D Model of it.
2. Identify the major features on the 3D Model to create a mesh. Add some details. Generate a model of the mask.
3. Print the product with a 3D printer.
4. Add some inflating units onto the mask, through the control of which the relative position of the facial landmarks can be altered.
5. Put ID on!
d.
Our design aims to safeguard those who are exposed to potential dangers due to the transparency of identities: Put ID on, be yourself! We hope, however, that we will never have to live in a world where put ID on becomes absolutely necessary for all. Through our design, people can also be reminded of the importance of privacy in the era of technology:
Take ID off, be real.
