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Comment by gonehome | Hacker News Reader

It won't save you - gait detection is also being used in places like China and that's a lot harder to protect yourself from.

Systems also tend to use regular and infrared images for detection too (at least in the case of ALPR).

We need people to care about these things and how the data is used, we need laws for rules around collection, access, and rights. We need to work together towards maintaining the ideas that support western democracy rather than moving towards nationalism.

I worry that instability from climate change and the refugee crisis that comes from that instability will make things worse, along with the current centralization of wealth/inequality issues and rise of more populist right wing movements.

Individual technical solutions will likely not do much to protect you if we lose the cultural framework around democracy.

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> gait detection

All I can think of is The Ministry of Silly Walks.

The cyberpunk media was all wrong- people won't be wearing masks and punk hairstyles to hide their faces; they'll be walking silly and wearing baggy pants to hide their gaits.

You have a great point with the baggy pants. I think I'll go invest in Jnco.

Maybe the future is just full of EM blasters and jammers, made as easy to buy and hard to control as insanely overpowered laser pointers.

It's sickening to think that you're going to have to engage in actual electronic warfare with the world around you just to buy some milk for breakfast.

In order to save yourself from, what exactly? The local grocer having a picture of you in their store?

What do they need that for?

Also, such systems are primarily used by chain shops, and provided by specialized companies. Both mean the data gets shared to multiple entities.

"His walking pattern indicates that both legs are artificial below the knees. Similarly, the unconscious habit of stroking his prosthetic right arm is a clear symptom of Phantom Limb Syndrome. It's also a strong external characteristic of the presence of a Ghost. Based upon these and other distinct behavior patterns matched against European Police databanks, I conclude this person is Marcelo Jarti." ~ Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2004), S1E7 - IDOLATOR

Exoskeleton that walks with a pseudo-random gait.

Christ! At that point, you just give up and go live in the woods.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz1M5i5Y4Qc&t=1m40s

“Did you find him in the video feed sir?”

“We got nothing via gait detection, but the intern noticed this guy walking around in an exoskeleton suit so we sent a unit out to bring him in”

Now you know the REAL reason that they banned Segways everywhere!

;)

Now remember, walk without rhythm, and we won't attract the worm.

I thought the workaround there was to put a handful of gravel in your shoes to disguise your gait

Are you always changing the amount of gravel every time you go out? These work arounds seem pretty unrealistic and likely you could try and train whatever variance they cause anyway into the model.

Can't wait for the next YC Demo Day darling: the first truly random gravel dispenser.

Turns out that it knocks around enough and ends up about as good as varying the amount. Lego pieces work too if you want a more lightweight solution.

Gait detection can be easily be fooled, you just wear some weird shoes that make walking hard in. Your gait will change drastically. Alternate between zero drop, heel and reverse heel.

Fast forward to the year 2050: "Why is everyone wearing ski boots and ski masks... it's 100 degrees?"

Imagine yourself tasked with solving this problem, how would you do it?

The first thing I would do is gather a bunch of data for people walking trying to mess up their gait. Different types of shoes, pebbles in shoes etc. Then include that in the model or even just look for that as suspicious itself.

You're not giving enough credit to the capability of the people that do this kind of work. It is not simple to avoid and the vast majority of people would not even go this far.

How many people communicate entirely over encryption today?

It's actually a hard problem that people who do this encounter and seems impossible to get right. We actually can tell if a friend is walking in the distance by looking at gait+clothes but could make mistkes as well, it's not 100% accurate. For surveillance reasons it's much easier to get 100 accuracy with just tagging people with microchips and that'a that. Why would we want to excel at gait-fingerprinting people?? That's a scary thing to want to perfect. Very Science fictiony and hopefully not prevalent in the future

Randomized inflating bladders under your toe and heel, change your shoe type as you walk!

> gait detection

not to be confused with galt detection, which tracks people who've read Atlas Shrugged and took its economic/political philosophy a little too seriously.

Laws are only as reliable as the integrity of those who write and enforce them.

I agree - that's why it's just as important to maintain the culture of western democracy, government driven by an idea and not by people. If we lose that then the laws won't protect us either.

A relevant description I heard that I liked was that democracy is a boulder at the top of a hill that was pushed there by the deaths of millions, ready to roll down at any time. It takes work to keep things in that state and to protect it.

And when they're being written by lobbyists from Wal-Mart and Target...

Or AT&T, GM, Amazon, and all the other biggest members of the Fortune 100.

Put a stone in your shoe and periodically move it to change your gait.

Gait detection is a joke, technically discredited, and only suitable for use by bad journalism. It does not work because it is so easily defeated: put a rock in your shoe, where your shoes on the wrong feet, or just injure a foot. Your gait is different.

Put a small pebble in your shoe. Alternate shoes regularly.

Maybe bell bottom pants will come back in fashion!

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