… and thought, “that can’t be right.” Then, as soon as that thought crossed his mind, he’d think “good,” and pick the next of his neatly-folded uniform jackets off the stack, struggle into it, then turn off the light and leave.
At first the security officer wrote him up, because he made the same patterns. Then, he hit on a simple trick: if the yolk of his breakfast egg was on the right, he made a bar on the right. If the butter on his toast was thin, the lines were thin. If it was thick, the lines were thick. It was more random than the newspaper, which said pretty much the same thing every day.
self-portrait 2017
The whole “ubiquitous facial recognition technology” (generally called “ufart”) hadn’t done anything except divide people into the annoyed and the recognizable. Some people wore masks, like the Venetian Carnival masks of the early renaissance, others wore latex prostheses, but most settled for simple line-break tape. For a little while, southerners were “jokingly” wearing blackface, until the random punchings became too common. Protestors and punchers had learned to game the facial recognition more aggressively – latex masks of Jeff Sessions and Osama Bin Laden were popular, though Guy Fawkes was still auto-ID’d as the perpetrator of a gigantic number of crimes.
As he walked up to the subway gate, a red light began to spin and the gate stayed closed. “What?” There was a new little display on the gate behind an armored steel and sapphire glass enclosure, reading ‘Citizen not recognized; subway unavailable. Please present ID at the Kiosk.’ It was going to be a long walk, and it was raining.
The intelligence/police state has realized that it can tie social services to social control: do you want your support check? Take a drug test. Do you want to get on an airplane? Show your ID. They have been building to a decision-point where simply walking down the street is tacit agreement to extensive audit: your face, your location, your personal tracking-device. The figured this out after 9/11, when airport security became a trade-off: “do you want to get there today, or do you want the contents of your bag to remain private?”
Meanwhile, the oligarchs who travel privately, have nearly zero controls on them at all. There was a time when Paul R and I were going to a meeting up in Canada, and Peter Tippet, the CEO of TruSecure offered to fly us in his Piper Apache. He told us “feel free to bring guns.” We met at the million-air (get it?) facility in Leesburg and walked onto the plane: no security. We taxii’d, took off, and flew to Buffalo, then deplaned for espresso and some paperwork, then got back in the plane and flew up into Canada, landed, and drove to our destination. At no point did we encounter any security or search. For an oligarch with over $300 million in the bank, the $20,000/day that a plane with a private pilot costs, is nothing (unless you’re Mnuchin) For the less highly-placed servant of the oligarchy, there’s always frequent traveller and TSA precheck. I do the precheck because it’s generally a half hour or more saved at each security line. The borders are pretty porous if you’re rich; that’s the arrangement: they’ve got theirs, fuck everyone else.
I’m mad that I composed the photo straight-on as I usually do. For fooling UFART systems, I would want to angle the camera and crop things oddly, as well. Unfortunately I thought of that too late, and I was too lazy to go back and reshoot it.
What would glitter in your face-cream do?
He told us “feel free to bring guns.”
Works fine as long as no one notices a gun while you are in Canada.
A cased rifle or shotgun is not likely to be noticed but a hand gun in Canada is likely to be taken as prima facie evidence of dangerous criminal intent by the general population.
…followed very soon by all forms of local law-enforcement
jrkrideau@#2:
Works fine as long as no one notices a gun while you are in Canada.
We didn’t bring any. But, given the security, we could have.
You know, they should build a wall. There are bad people on both sides, etc.
chigau@#1:
What would glitter in your face-cream do?
Probably give me glitterzits?
*gulp a shot*
get serious
is there some photoreflctivewhatever that would confound … whatever it it we are trying to confound?
Wearing a mask in public, outside of Halloween and a few other exceptions, is already illegal in some regions. Here’s someone arrested for wearing a Joker face makeup. https://www.jwz.org/blog/2017/03/joker-arrested-for-wearing-a-mask-in-public/
At https://cvdazzle.com/ they also use the hair to help avoid CV detection.
Chigau, try a tin foil balaclava. That should protect you from facial recognition and psychic attacks all while keeping your hair dry in the rain. Last but not least it would also be a bold fashion statement, if your’e into those.
Regarding security for private jets:
One wonders what would happen if private jets were involved in a few high-profile terror attacks.
a) Massive security circus around private jets, same as commercial flights
b) Spurious excuse why a didn’t happen
Don’t tell me, I think I can work it out myself, eventually.
P.S.: Marcus, replace your haircut with a crewcut and you’d probably make a decent enough alien to qualify for Star Trek or similar shows. The Rani, a militaristic species from Marconi III, on the edge of the beta quadrant…
Those of us with identical twins are already working out the benefits we can get from this technology. When I get annoyed with my brother I will soon be able to go out and implicate him in a string of horrible crimes!
chigau@#6:
is there some photoreflctivewhatever that would confound … whatever it it we are trying to confound?
A tape job like I illustrate would utterly bollix most face recognition systems (which will tell you how good they are at recognizing faces!)
The problem I don’t know how to solve is that the police state is already very willing to deploy other means of coercion if we resist their entry-level ones. Since 9/11, the police state has been doing nothing BUT layering on means of coercion that they can use. Consider some of the stuff Shiv has been writing about: here – threatening someone with 75 years for attending a protest? Sure. And if you aren’t carrying your papers in an approved holder, you get on the terror watch-list and never are able to travel without a cavity search.
Andrew Dalke@#7:
Wearing a mask in public, outside of Halloween and a few other exceptions, is already illegal in some regions.
Yep, that was an old law that I believe was put in place against the KKK back in the day, but was then re-purposed to threaten the Occupy protesters.
B for Balloon:
cartomancer@#9:
Those of us with identical twins are already working out the benefits we can get from this technology. When I get annoyed with my brother I will soon be able to go out and implicate him in a string of horrible crimes!
Ah, the “twin brother dilemma” – which brother sets which brother up for what, first? I believe it’s going to be on the next round of social science studies.
komarov@#8:
P.S.: Marcus, replace your haircut with a crewcut and you’d probably make a decent enough alien to qualify for Star Trek or similar shows.
Surely I need some kind of silicone forehead prosthesis to really make the grade on Star Trek.
No, odd-looking facepaint (or -tape) is sufficient. I think there may even have been instances where merely an ‘alien’ dress-code was enough.* (Klingons from TOS being the most egregious example, what with their later update) That said, I wouldn’t stop you if you wanted to raid your closet again and surprise us with an alien photoshoot. If you’ve been looking for an excuse for your to show off more of your costume goodies then here you are.
*Yet somehow I still find that more appealing than today’s CGI-mania.
komarov@#14:
Challenge accepted.
waiting …