Ant-facial recognition tech at the Hong Kong protests was an art project

There have been some tweets going around about a "wearable face projector" being employed at the ongoing protests in Hong Kong.

Wearable face projector#AntiMaskLaw #EmergencyLaw pic.twitter.com/Px3ATu6Lp1

— Happy Day (@HappySharingDay) October 4, 2019

It's essentially the same as the scramble suits from Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darklyinstead of disguising yourself assomeone else, it disguises you aseveryoneelse, projecting a constantly shifting visage that drives the facial recognition AI crazy. It certainly makes sense that someone would try to use something like this in Hong Kong, where the mere act of protecting one's identity in public is now punishable by aUSD3,200 fine.

Except it's not from the Hong Kong protests. It's actually an art project by Jing-Cai Liu, an industrial design student at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Liu had come up with the concept of a wearable face projector as an undergrad at the University of the Arts in Utrecht. "In the future, the advertisement could call your name when you walk along the streets," she writes on her website:

Mega databanks andhigh-resolutioncameras in the streets stock hundreds of exabytes a year. But who has access to this data? It is possible that it could have commercial use, hence not only retail companies but also the advertisement industry could be very interested in this data in the coming future. They would hope to gain these personal data and information as much as they can.

[]

The companies would know your personal interests and may set different retail strategies for you.