Transcription
Welcome to part two of my video series on how to defeat facial recognition. And thank you to the 1.2 million viewers who made the first video in this series my most watched video to date.
In part one of this series, I explained how stores such as Kroger, Macy's, Albertson's, and many others are using facial recognition to identify and track customers inside of their stores. According to the Federal Trade Commission, some stores are using facial recognition to adjust prices on a customer-by-customer basis to charge you the maximum amount they think you would be willing to pay based on your annual income and other information they know about you.
In part one of this series, I also explained how facial recognition works and how regular sunglasses are transparent to an infrared facial recognition camera. But a $13 reflective hat from Amazon can defeat some facial recognition systems by blinding the infrared camera. I concluded that video with a summary of test results which demonstrated infrared blocking glasses and an infrared reflecting hat could defeat Face ID on an iPhone.
My original plan for the second video in this series was to test these same techniques with two other facial recognition systems called Open CV and Faceet that are commonly used in stores. However, I received a lot of great suggestions in the comment section of my first video about other techniques I should try. So, in this video, I will be testing a bunch of your suggestions, including mirrored and polarized sunglasses, reflective stickers, infrared LED illuminators, and infrared reflective sunscreen. Links to all of these products tested and to all of the sources I cite are in the description of this video.
I am Dr. John Padfield, an engineer turned state representative turned business professor, and this is Business Reform, where we discuss issues at the intersection of business, technology, and society.
After I released my first video in this series, a subscriber emailed me a link to a story in the Washington Post from May 19th, 2025. The story is about how New Orleans police secretly used facial recognition technology for 2 years. And I don't mean they just kept it secret from the public. They also kept it secret from the city council. Because in 2022, the city council passed an ordinance limiting how the police can use facial recognition in a noble attempt to balance the public's privacy with the needs of law enforcement. But rather than following the ordinance, police started using a facial recognition system offered by Project Nola, a private company that installed and operates more than 200 facial recognition cameras on the streets of New Orleans. The police did not disclose their use of Project NOLA facial recognition cameras in their police reports, and they did not include them in the mandatory reports to the city council about the use of facial recognition systems. In other words, the people hired to enforce the law were knowingly and intentionally violating local laws they didn't like.
My point in sharing this news story is that Project Nola is not a company using facial recognition on their own property like Kroger or Lowe's. They are a private company putting up hundreds of facial recognition cameras on city streets nationwide. If you don't want to be in their database every time you step out of your house, you need a way to defeat facial recognition. So, let's do some testing and see what works.
All the photos I took for this video were taken on a mini game camera with night vision mounted on a tripod. The camera will automatically turn on infrared LEDs when it is dark, so the photos can be taken in complete darkness.
The two most frequent suggestions I saw in the comments asked me to test mirrored sunglasses and polarized sunglasses, so I purchased a pair of each from Amazon. These photos show what mirrored sunglasses look like under normal light and under infrared light. As dark as the glasses appear with infrared light, they did not stop my iPhone from unlocking with Face ID. I then tried polarized sunglasses, and you can clearly see my eyes in the infrared photo. My iPhone also unlocked when I was wearing these glasses. And just to be thorough, I also purchased a pair of sunglasses that were both mirrored and polarized. The result was the same. I was able to unlock my iPhone with Face ID while wearing these sunglasses as well.
This is not a sponsored video, but I want to be 100% open and transparent about the next two items I tested. In my first video in this series, I tested two pairs of infrared blocking sunglasses I purchased from a company called Reflecticles, and both pairs defeated Face ID on my iPhone. I do not have any affiliation with Reflecticles, and I paid full price for both pairs of glasses that I used in that video. However, shortly after I posted that video, I was contacted by the owner of Reflecticles, who thanked me for reviewing his company's glasses and told me he had been flooded with orders as a result of my video. He offered to send me two free pairs of his best anti-facial recognition glasses, and I graciously accepted his generous offer. The glasses he sent me were the Ghost and Phantom models. What is unique about these glasses is they not only have infrared blocking lenses, they also have infrared reflecting frames. This is the Ghost model with white frames that reflect both visible light and infrared light. And this is the Phantom model that only reflects infrared light. So, it is less obvious these glasses are intended to enhance your privacy. The Ghost glasses reflected a lot of infrared back to the camera. And these glasses prevented my iPhone from unlocking with Face ID. Likewise, the Phantom glasses also reflected a lot of infrared back to the camera and prevented my iPhone from unlocking with Face ID. These reflective frames should interfere with Open CV and FaceNet facial recognition, but that testing will be the subject of my third video in this series coming out in a few weeks.
As we wrap up the category of things that cover your eyes, I had a couple of viewers suggest that I test an eye patch. So, I purchased this one from Amazon. Trust me, you don't want to see me looking like a pirate. So, I will spare you from seeing the photo, but Face ID on my iPhone worked just fine while wearing the eye patch.
So, to summarize, out of the first six tests, the only thing that worked against Face ID on my iPhone was both pairs of Reflecticles glasses.
The next category of test is all related to reflectors. I bought a 20-pack of safety reflectors on Amazon like you would put on a bicycle for riding at night. They were very bright under an infrared light, but they did not prevent my iPhone from unlocking with Face ID. I also tried reflective tape, which was a lot cheaper than the stickers, although it looked almost identical. The tape looked and reflected just like the stickers. And it also failed to stop my iPhone from unlocking with Face ID. I thought maybe I wasn't using enough, so I put a sticker on both sides of my shirt collar and a long piece of tape on a hat, but my iPhone still did not have any problem unlocking with Face ID. The last sticker I tried was called Tactical IR Reflective Squares. They are black and have Velcro on one side and they are intended to be covert so it isn't as obvious to everyone that you are walking around wearing reflectors. They were $14 for a six-pack of 1 in x 1 in squares. They were highly reflective under infrared light, but they did not prevent my iPhone from unlocking. So, my test results show the reflectors are O for three.
The third category of test is all related to infrared LED illuminators or light sources. This is a rechargeable night vision illuminator I bought from Amazon for $24. It is made for photographers and it has a cold shoe mount for attaching it to a camera. My thinking was that a series of infrared LEDs could be incorporated into the brim of a hat like this one. But for a quick test, I decided to just attach the infrared LED illuminator to the hat. You can clearly see how much the infrared illuminator blinded the infrared camera, but it did not prevent my iPhone from unlocking with Face ID. I then tried a different rechargeable infrared illuminator for photographers. Although it was big and bulky, I thought maybe someone better at arts and crafts than me could turn this into something like a big necklace. Again, it is obvious the infrared illuminator is interfering with the infrared camera, but this infrared illuminator did not prevent my iPhone from unlocking with Face ID. The two most common wavelengths of infrared used in facial recognition cameras are 850 nanometer and 940 nanometer. This is an 850 nanometer night vision flashlight and just like the photography infrared illuminators, it clearly interferes with an infrared camera, but it did not prevent my iPhone from unlocking with Face ID. I repeated this test with a 940 nanometer night vision flashlight and got the same result. It clearly interfered with the infrared camera, but it did not prevent my iPhone from unlocking with Face ID.
So, out of the four infrared illuminators and night vision flashlights, none of them prevented my iPhone from unlocking. However, I do want to point out that the iPhone is a much more advanced 3D facial recognition system than the 2D systems used in most security cameras. Just because none of the reflectors or illuminators defeated the iPhone does not automatically mean they would not work against 2D facial recognition systems such as Open CV or Faceet. But again, those tests will be covered in the third video in this series.
The last two items I tested were two types of infrared reflective sunscreen made by a company called Bella Aurora. Most sunscreens are only intended to protect you against ultraviolet light, but Bella Aurora makes an SPF 50 plus and a UVA+ sunscreen that is supposed to reflect infrared. I must have bought the last tube of UVA plus sunscreen from Amazon because it took weeks for it to arrive from Europe and it is no longer available on Amazon. I tested both sunscreens and neither appeared to interfere with the infrared camera and neither stopped my iPhone from unlocking with Face ID.
To summarize all of my testing in this video, the only thing that prevented my iPhone from unlocking was the two pairs of Reflecticles sunglasses. Be sure to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss my upcoming privacy videos, including part three in this series, where I will test all of these techniques against the less sophisticated and more common 2D facial recognition systems, Open CV and Faceet.
Two quick announcements. Ever since my channel grew to over 25,000 subscribers, I have been receiving a constant stream of offers for video sponsorships. I have politely been declining those offers, but videos like this are expensive to produce because of all the products I had to purchase to test. If you want to financially support the work I am doing on this channel, you can buy me a coffee by either scanning this QR code or going to this URL.
And finally, my Brushfires of Freedom tour kicks off on July 17th, 2025 in Knoxville, Tennessee, followed by events in Fairfax, Orlando, and Tulsa. Go to brushfiresour.com for more details.
If you have suggestions for any other privacy enhancing product you want me to test, please let me know in the comments section and I will see what I can do. While I am the only face you see on this channel, I do have a small team of friends who help me out, but they prefer to remain anonymous rather than being on camera. Thank you for watching.