We live in a world where nearly everyone can whip out a camera from his or her own pocket at a moment's notice. That means your picture is probably taken constantly — inadvertently or otherwise — without you knowing it, and it could end up virtually anywhere. If the thought of all of that is making you feel a little uneasy, there may be a new way to keep your identity private when you're in public.
The National Institute of Informatics in Japan has developed the Privacy Visor, eyeglasses that make it so facial-recognition systems in cameras can't detect and focus on human facial features, according to the Wall Street Journal's Japan Real Time blog. The Privacy Visor has a single lens with angles and patterns on it that stretches across a set of frames. This works to reflect or absorb light, which inhibits facial recognition in cameras from working properly, thus not letting your face show up clearly if it were to be shared widely on social networks. The glasses have fooled the facial-recognition system of cameras and smartphones 90 percent of the time in tests conducted by the National Institute of Informatics so far, according to Japan Real Time.
As Vice's Motherboard points out, an earlier version of the Privacy Visor developed by the National Institute of Informatics used 11 near-infrared LEDs to essentially blind cameras as they took photos of faces. Human eyes couldn't see the lights, but they appear bright after passing through a camera's imaging device, according to a video demonstrating the visor below.
The new Privacy Visor will retail for 30,000 yen, or $240, and is scheduled to go on sale by June 2016.
These days, people don't just have to worry about their pictures being taken by anyone with a camera or a smartphone. Facial-recognition software is increasingly becoming a greater part of everyday life in other areas. For instance, it has already been used in out-of-home ads, Facebook's Moments app and MasterCard as a payment method in recent months. As we head toward the future, it's likely that keeping one's identity safe from facial-recognition systems will become a more pressing concern as well.
