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George Floyd protests: Signal chat app automatically pixelates faces

Signal appears to be one of the preferred messengers in the wake of anti-racism protests in the United States. The app, which protects all calls, group chats and messages with particularly secure end-to-end encryption, has been around in the past few days according to data from an analysis company installed more often than ever. Accordingly, the app has been downloaded 121,000 times in the past two weeks and was in the top 10 iOS download charts for social apps.

“We’re working to keep up with the increase in traffic,” said signal chief Moxie Marlinspike. In a blog post, he also announced a new feature that can be used to blur faces in photos in one go. To do this, users only have to tap the “Blur faces” slider, then a minimally transparent pixel square is placed over all faces in an image. Any other areas of the photo can also be “painted over” by wiping with your finger.

The function is part of an update that Signal has already stored in the app stores, explained Marlinspike. The app stores would play the update “as soon as possible” on phones on which Signal is installed or when users reinstall the app. The function is already available in a test version.

Investigators use facial recognition to identify suspects

The FBI and several other US authorities have recently called for videos and images of demonstrators to be uploaded to special information portals. Some officials also brought Face recognition technology comes into playto identify suspected criminals. In the United States, more and more police stations are using biometric software to automatically identify people in photos.

Signal builds on the current functions of Android and iOS with the function of blurring faces. However, these don’t work 100 percent of the time, which is why it was important to add the ability to manually blur faces, as Marlinspike said. He emphasized that the images were completely processed on the users ‘devices in order to protect the users’ data.

“At Signal, we want to support people who want to be heard on the street,” Marlinspike wrote in a blog post. One is convinced that something has to change in America.

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