SoK: Anti-Facial Recognition Technology

Abstract

The rapid adoption of facial recognition (FR) technology by both government and commercial entities in recent years has raised concerns about civil liberties and privacy. In response, a broad suite of so-called "anti-facial recognition" (AFR) tools has been developed to help users avoid unwanted facial recognition. The set of AFR tools proposed in the last few years is wide-ranging and rapidly evolving, necessitating a step back to consider the broader design space of AFR systems and long-term challenges. This paper aims to fill that gap and provides the first comprehensive analysis of the AFR research landscape. Using the operational stages of FR systems as a starting point, we create a systematic framework for analyzing the benefits and tradeoffs of different AFR approaches. We then consider both technical and social challenges facing AFR tools and propose directions for future research in this field.

Experimental Analyses of the Physical Surveillance Risks in Client-Side Content Scanning

“…At this point, the attacker can perform additional analyses on the images to extract different types of information. For example, they could run the image through a face recognition system [33], [6], [52]; or if the CSIS system also reports user identity, they can automatically place a specific user at a specific physical location.…”