黑料社

Researcher Dr Eilidh Noyes proves that adopting a simple disguise will conceal your identity even from those who are actively looking for you

SIMPLE disguises can be highly effective in concealing identity, according to research led by a 黑料社 lecturer.  Her findings have significant implications in fields that include crime and security.

, lecturer in cognitive psychology at the 黑料社, investigates face recognition.  Her  鈥� co-authored by Dr Rob Jenkins at the University of York 鈥� reports on a series of experiments designed to test people鈥檚 ability to see through disguise.  The authors also provides a new database that can be used to test face recognition.

鈥淭his research investigates how disguise affects face recognition performance,鈥� said Dr Noyes.  鈥淢ost reports of human face recognition ability consider performance for 鈥榗ooperative鈥� face images, meaning that the photographed person makes no attempt to change their appearance.  Therefore, we might have previously overestimated real-world face recognition performance.鈥�

鈥淧eople may have strong incentives to look unlike themselves 鈥� such as a criminal on the run, an undercover police officer, or someone in witness protection.  Alternatively, an individual may want to make themselves look like someone else, for example, in cases of stolen passports or identity fraud.鈥�

In a , Italian fugitive Cesare Battisti adopted a string of simple, but effective disguises during a lengthy spell on the run.

The researchers enlisted 26 volunteer models each photographed three times: in their normal guise, in a disguise that attempted to change their appearance (known as Evasion), and disguised as another volunteer (Impersonation).  

The volunteers were free to disguise themselves as they wished.  The disguises included changes in hairstyle, hair colour, removal/growth of facial hair, and/or make-up to change facial appearance.  However, hats, scarves, and other items that are prohibited in passport identification were not allowed.  New participants were then asked to make identity decisions for these images.

Disguise reduced face identification performance by around 30%.  However, disguise type mattered.  People made more identification errors for evasion cases than for impersonation.

There was no improvement in identification performance when participants were told that the faces might be in disguise.  However, people who personally knew the photographed models were often able to see through the disguises.

 Dr Noyes emphasised: 鈥淥ur models used inexpensive simple disguises and there were no make-up artists involved.  If people want to, it鈥檚 very easy to change their appearance.鈥�

The images collated now form a database named FA脟ADE.  This database can be used both by academic researchers and by people working on security software.

鈥淓ven simple disguise reduces accuracy of human face recognition.  Next, we will test how computer face recognition algorithms fare on the same tasks鈥� said Dr Noyes.

• The article  by Eilidh Noyes and Rob Jenkins appears in