this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
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Time to carry portable EMPs
… uhhh how do I make one?
Get a disposable camera, it won't be large enough to do much but it's a fun little project and you can learn the concept
You don't need a portable EMP.
All you need is basic KN95 mask and a hoodie. Or you can invest in sunglasses or ID-blocking eyeglasses, like IDGuard from Zenni. The point is to have your features covered as much as is feasible. When I go to a protest I wear a costume that covers my whole head and a jumpsuit.
You should have a KN95 on anyway if you're going out among people.
Sure, but that won’t knock it out for people who don’t have their own mask
You should know facial recognition software is optimized to defeat KN95 masks specifically
What do you think what you posted even means? covering most of what it is using to identify is already going to make it drastically more difficult to match
Not really. It’s trivial to match your face. If you use an iPhone with FaceID it won’t miss a beat. You have to cover your full face, head, and eyes.
The problem with this is that the idea of “KN95 and a hoodie” is that you’d still reasonably blend in. By the time you reach the point t of covering every identified part of your head, you’d also stick out like a sore thumb which doesn’t help you when the camera surveilling you is attached to the face of an ICE agent looking specifically in your direction.
Do you have a reliable link to show this? I'm asking not to challenge or sealion, but because I'd like to know the limits of what you're referring to for my own safety and privacy.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102452
Thanks. I think that's enough to see where you're going. It's on me to find better evidence, so I looked and it looks like a 2020 NIST report suggests masks increase the failure rate in 89 tested algorithms from 0.3% to 5-50%.
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2020/07/nist-launches-studies-masks-effect-face-recognition-software
That failure rate is enough to give plausible deniability and reasonable doubt in a court, I'd wager. But I'm sure ICE sees a higher failure rate a feature since it likely gives them more pretexts to arrest. At least we know the technology isn't reliable enough to support it.
I mean court’s not really a factor. The surveillance tech is only to help identify targets. One they nab you that’s it. The Supreme Court already ruled that it’s ok for them to target people based only on race. The confidence level of the tech against your covered face is sorta irrelevant in this scenario.
Then wear a cloth one with a pattern on it.
This isn't difficult.
That won’t work either and it’s very difficult as a matter of fact.
Agreed that there's no perfect solution.
But one can, and should, make it harder, and if your head, eyes, and face are covered (which is exceedingly easy and inexpensive to do with a ball cap, sunglasses, and a face mask) it's going to beat all but the best systems.
The IR blocking glasses won't help with normal CV though, right? If you wear those glasses and try to unlock your iPhone, it won't work because the IR array can't read the facial features behind the glasses, but if you take a photo of yourself with said iPhone, they will appear as normal glasses