this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
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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.