Fool surveillance cameras by wearing a 3D printed mask of this artist's face
You're being watched! You probably know already that law enforcement agencies in many countries are using surveillance cameras to track people. "Everyone has a right to privacy," says Chicago artist Leo Selvaggio. Selvaggio has launched an Indiegogo campaign to fund a service called URME Surveillance to help people to combat surveillance.
Selvaggio is creating a URME Surveillance Identity Prosthetic and a paper mask that mimics his own face. Through the use of a prosthetic mask, his face will be presented to the camera instead of the wearer's, shielding their identity from inspection.
"The basic gist is that rather than hide from cameras, simply give them a face other than your own to track without drawing attention to yourself in a crowd." writes the artist.
The mask is made by thatsmyface.com using the latest technology. The mask is both a 3D scan of artist Leo Selvaggio's face, as well as photo realistic rendering of his features, such as skin tone, texture and hair. The 3D model is made out of resin with stereolithography process. "The prosthetic is passable in public, most people won't look at you twice on the street, and it is pretty seamless to most security cameras." Selvaggio says.
Besides masks, Selvaggio is also starting URME Voice, a series of crowd-sourced short interviews, made from people donating their opinion about surveillance. "URME Surveillance isn't just about anti-surveillance devices." writes Selvaggio. "At its core is an instigation towards public discourse and a platform for community development through our common concern over surveillance."
"What would happen if security cameras could no longer identify a public but instead could only detect hundreds of me walking down the street?"
On top of the masks and interviews, Selvaggio is also creating an open-source facial encryption software (MAC only) that allows you to replace up to five faces in the video with his face and save it as a new file, which you can share without fear of your identity being tied to it.