Free Republic

Uploading personal photos to the internet can feel like letting go. Who else will have access to them, what will they do with them—and which machine-learning algorithms will they help train? The company Clearview has already supplied US law enforcement agencies with a facial recognition tool trained on photos of millions of people scraped from the public web. But that was likely just the start. Anyone with basic coding skills can now develop facial recognition software, meaning there is more potential than ever to abuse the tech in everything from sexual harassment and racial discrimination to political oppression and religious...

Researchers with the University of Chicago's SAND Lab have detailed the development of a new tool called Fawkes that subtly alters images in a way that makes them unusable for facial recognition. The tool comes amid growing concerns about privacy and an editorial detailing the secret scraping of billions of online images to create facial recognition models. Put simply, Fawkes is a cloaking tool that modifies images in ways imperceptible to the human eye. The idea is that anyone can download the tool, which has been made publicly available, to first cloak their images before posting them online. The name...

The idiotic anti-Catholic celebration of Guy Fawkes Day, observed each November fifth, was effectively ended in America during the Revolution, in large part due to George Washington. Here is his order on November 5, 1775: As the Commander in Chief has been apprized of a design form’d for the observance of that ridiculous and childish custom of burning the Effigy of the pope–He cannot help expressing his surprise that there should be Officers and Soldiers in this army so void of common sense, as not to see the impropriety of such a step at this Juncture; at a Time when...

Remember, remember the Fifth of November. And remember to wear your mask! Your Guy Fawkes/"V for Vendetta" mask, that is. No, Halloween is not over. You can keep wearing your costume into November, especially today, November 5th, Guy Fawkes Day. It's the trendy outfit to wear to your local Occupy protest. All the cool Guys and gals are wearing it. And when you walk into your bank today to close out your account, and they look at you a little funny because you're wearing a mask, don't be alarmed, even if you start hearing an alarm! Just tell them...

Forget Guy Fawkes – Remember, Remember the Ninth of November for The Fall of the Berlin Wall The fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago freed millions from tyranny and poverty, argues Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson. 02 Nov 2009 Berliners from the east and west of the city celebrate the opening of the Berlin Wall Photo: EPA I am thinking champagne. And cake. And fireworks, of course, not just any old fireworks but some of those truly shell-shocking bits of Chinese ordnance called Harmonious Geese or Whispering Swans. Far more important than the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot, far...