---
title: "Activists Build Facial Recognition to ID Cops Who Hide Their Badges"
description: "Activists are turning facial recognition software against the police by using it to ID cops who hide their badges. Learn how this works."
date: "2020-10-21"
modified: "2020-10-28"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/activists-build-facial-recognition-id-cops-hide-badges"
categories:
  - "Artificial Intelligence"
  - "Facial recognition"
tags:
  - "facial recognition"
  - "police"
  - "the digest"
---

# Activists Build Facial Recognition to ID Cops Who Hide Their Badges

![A growing number of activists are training new facial recognition algorithms to ID cops who hide their names while cracking down on protests.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/activists-build-facial-recognition-id-cops-hide-badges.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: andrewarchy via Flickr/Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

## Own Medicine

In order to hold police accountable when they try to hide their identities, a growing number of activists are developing facial recognition tools that identify cops, *[The New York Times ](<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/technology/facial-recognition-police.html#click=https://t.co/6aQLVYGBUi>)*[reports](<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/technology/facial-recognition-police.html#click=https://t.co/6aQLVYGBUi>) — a striking inversion of the way cops [tend to use](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/government-leak-cops-terrified-masks-block-facial-recognition>) facial recognition [on protestors](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/spying-protestors-make-public-distrust-surveillance>) [and suspects](<https://futurism.com/police-facial-recognition-unconscious-suspects>).

It's a satisfying role reversal. Police are hiding their identities while cracking down on protests, in other words, just to be outed by the same invasive technology that they use to surveil the populace.

## Vigilante Justice

One of the projects was a shower thought for self-taught programmer Christopher Howell. He's identifying cops in Portland, Oregon because they were permitted to cover their names while responding to protests. Portland [banned facial recognition](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/senators-propose-national-ban-police-facial-recognition>) for cops and companies, but the *NYT* reports that Howell's project is permitted because he's an individual working on a passion project.

"There's a lot of excessive force here in Portland," Howell told the *NYT*. "Knowing who the officers are seems like a baseline."

## Court Change

Building these tools has become simple, the *NYT* reports, due to increasingly common off-the-shelf software. The real challenge, activists say, is finding enough images of local police to train the algorithm. They've had luck on social media, they told the newspaper.

"For a while now, everyone was aware the big guys could use this to identify and oppress the little guys, but we’re now approaching the technological threshold where the little guys can do it to the big guys," Andrew Maximov, a developer working on a similar project, told the *NYT*. "It's not just the loss of anonymity. It's the threat of infamy."

**READ MORE:** [Activists Turn Facial Recognition Tools Against the Police](<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/technology/facial-recognition-police.html#click=https://t.co/6aQLVYGBUi>) \[*The New York Times*\]

**More on facial recognition:** *[Cops Arrested an Innocent Man Because Facial Recognition Told Them To](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/cops-arrested-innocent-man-facial-recognition>)*

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)