Protect your privacy

AVG innovation labs will reveal a set of concept invisibility glasses at the Pepcom in Barcelona before the Mobile World Congress. The eye wear will help you protect your privacy by making facial recognition useless. The invisibility glasses make it difficult for smart cameras or other facial recognition technologies to get a clear view of your face and so of your
identity. According to AVG there are several reasons why these kind of invisibility glasses could become useful.

 
• The increasing use of smart phone cameras in public places means it’s more likely unsolicited images taken of us may end up online.
 
• Big Data projects such as Google’s StreetView highlight the possibility for our faces and identities to appear in the public domain.
 
• Advancements in facial-recognition technologies, such as Facebook’s DeepFace, could soon give a private corporations power to not only recognize us, but also cross-reference our faces to other data found on-line.(text via AVG)

The new technologies around privacy glasses is still new and in it’s prototype phase.There are two ways these privacy glasses could work. The first is the usage of LED’s around the eyes and nose. This method was introduced by Isao Echizen of the Tokyo Nation Institute of Informatics. The LED"s are only detectable by cameras and not the human eye. Tokyo Nation Institute of Informatics claims that facial recognition won’t work when the LED lights are on.

Another way to fool facial recognition technologies is by using special retro-reflective materials. These ‘smart’ materials could maintain your privacy at the moment that the image is taken. retro-reflective materials are specially designed to reflect light back at the same angle as it arrived. Retro-reflective materials will send most of the light back to the sensors of the camera/phone. The effect of this that is an image that which puts the Dynamic Range of a camera / phone sensor to test.

The trend of an ever growing digitisation of our society makes the market and consumer wish for privacy protecting technology growing. So there are a lot of examples of technology which claims to protect our data and privacy. Just think about Silent Circle’s Black Phone or the new privacy protecting mail service Proton mail. But also think about using the net anonymous using Tor software. Or with the ever growing need for back ups and the rise of cloud computing there are a lot of services which make back up’s of your data claiming to protect your privacy. Think about services like Tarsnap or Spideroak.

The idea of privacy glasses isn’t new. We see a lot of developments where people want to reclaim their data and privacy. Think about new social networks like Seen.is or Ello. Many of the initiatives will not make it to the big audience. But the development of these new services and technologies are most interesting. They show us the emergence of a new trends. The rise of data reclamation and the anti digital trend. We see the rise of more awareness about the information we leave behind and share with organisations, governments etc. As a company you will have to become aware of this mind shift and changing attitude towards technology. A world of opportunity when you realise how future consumers want to be treated and how they want to be in control of their personal data.

Credits Images: AVG