January 28, 2015
http://www.zachblas.info//for PhillyVoice
Zach Blas in one of his biometrics masks.
Zach Blas, a professor at the University of Buffalo, made his masks using facial biometric data, and some can't be recognized as faces by software, Good Magazine reported.
Biometrics, according to the International Biometrics Society, is the identification of people based on biological traits. Governments across the world commonly use biometrics. In the United States, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Army and California Border Patrol gathered Jan. 26-28 for the ninth annual Biometrics for Government and Law Enforcement conference in Arlington, Virginia.
Blas said his mask project started with how he felt biometrics were taking away from identity.
"Biometrics are standardizing how you account for identity at a global, technical scale," he said. "I became really interested in how that kind of standardization was effecting queer people, people of color, transgender people, broad sets of minoritarian populations."
He said that biometrics are a way of categorizing people — and he worries it'll affect how people see things like the average criminal.
