Progress on the biometric kit: Prototype and field research.

This week Shir and I did some field research, speaking with several engineers, scientists, and software developers about the viability of some of the ideas we had for our anti-surveillance biometric kit.

We first spoke with Nasir Memon, a professor at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering who specializes in biometrics. He had some ideas for the kit, including some kind of wearable (a hat?) that would hold infrared LEDs that would shield the face from facial recognition while remaining imperceptible to the human eye. Upon his suggestion, we then spoke with three NYU engineering students about the viability of this idea and got some real feedback (some of which was positive, some of which presented more challenges).

We talked to Eric Rosenthal, a scientist and professor at ITP, about some of the work he’s done with IR lights and biometric identity verification while at Disney. Shir also spoke to Lior Ben-Kereth, a partner at the facial recognition company acquired by Facebook.

We decided to move forward with the infrared LED wearable idea, but first we needed to ensure that a range of different kinds of cameras do indeed pick up the infrared light. We connected a cluster of IR LEDs and pointed them at our iPhone camera, FaceTime, Snapchat, and a range of IP surveillance cameras – including three different kinds that are in use at ITP.

You can see the result of our test below:

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