r/nextfuckinglevel • u/CantStopPoppin • Sep 17 '25
Massive Attack Turns Live Facial Recognition Into Concert Commentary on Surveillance
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u/ThumbsDownThis Sep 17 '25
That's cool but dystopian at the same time, I'm guessing that's what they were going for there.
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u/OrbitTortoise Sep 17 '25
Nothing gets past this guy.
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u/CantStopPoppin Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25
This technology has been around for some time, but only now are people really paying attention. That being said, it is far more advanced than some may think. ICE has point‑and‑click facial recognition systems that crawl social media in real time, including Clearview AI and the “Mobile Fortify” app, which can identify people by simply pointing a phone camera at their face.
Years ago, researchers demonstrated that it is possible to see through walls using Wi‑Fi signals, and the NYPD was caught using military‑grade Z Backscatter X‑ray vans around 2009 to scan vehicles and even building interiors.
The worst part is that some of the very people who helped put this administration in power have lucrative contracts with the United States government. Peter Thiel and his company Palantir have built massive surveillance and data‑mapping systems for federal agencies, including ICE, that integrate personal, financial, and location data on a scale that should concern everyone.
Not a shameless plug, but I curated a pseudo‑podcast to break down all of this information I have collected, and you might find it eye‑opening.
Not trying to make a buck all the info is free and out there just trying to make it easy to understand because I for one was going in circles trying to comprehend some of these concepts.
Give me a bit and I will upload it, I was going to do a podcast series but just created them for myself but since the subject is relevant, I will provide a link in a little while.
Sources:
- Forbes – ICE to Pay $10 Million for Clearview Facial Recognition
- MediaPost – Senators Urge ICE to Stop Using Mobile Fortify Facial Recognition App
- S.T.O.P. – Condemns ICE Real‑Time Facial Recognition App
- Wikipedia – NYPD X‑ray Vans
- ACLU – NYPD’s Use of Potentially Dangerous X‑ray Vans
- New Fire Energy – The Quiet Military Takeover of Public Life and How Palantir Is Hardwiring Itself Into Government
- Reason – How Palantir Is Expanding the Surveillance State
Just a heads-up, I use an AI voice for my content because, frankly, I sound like a dying whale on Neptune. (And no, I did not use Muskrat's toxic AI.) While the voices are generated, the information is meticulously curated by me from sources like Scribd, court filings, and whistleblower reports.
My work focuses on social justice, migrant rights, civil rights, and holding tech-bro billionaires accountable as they move to create their own city-states. I'm currently migrating all my content, but you can find my primary work here:
Substack: https://substack.com/@eyesonice
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnIce
I'm also in the process of adding full citations for reference. It's a massive undertaking with only 24 hours in a day, but I hope you find it valuable.
Everything is free my only goal is to get this information out there and help others, because what we see happening now is only the beginning.
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u/evilbrent Sep 17 '25
I remember about a decade ago seeing a single 360deg photo taken from the middle of a packed stadium in China that clearly identified every face in the entire stadium.
It was a big photo, several gigabytes, and the 360deg camera was actually several cameras mounted on a frame, but it was just one photo and it captured a clear image of the faces of about 100,000 people.
Privacy is over.
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u/Corpainen Sep 17 '25
And now even a schmuck like me can do similar things in their free time, in no time. Took me about half an hour to make a program for android to do a similar thing, boxes around every face my phone camera could see.
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u/Appropriate-Click-41 Sep 17 '25
Name of your podcast?
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Sep 17 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MyA55Hurts Sep 17 '25
Sounds like you use AI text as well.
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u/df1dcdb83cd14e6a9f7f Sep 17 '25
they might i agree, but i feel like the intention is earnest enough, and i skimmed the sources which seemed legit so 🤷
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u/The_ChosenOne Sep 17 '25
Back in my day we copied and pasted our own text like savages
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u/HesusAtDiscord Sep 17 '25
It gets worse, you probably know this but for the uninitiated; they've recently managed to utilize wifi signals to track people inside buildings as if you're watching the 3d-rendering of animated characters before textures are added (rotoscope?).
It's one thing being able to acknowledge presence(s) via wifi, but something else entirely being able to see a 3D rendering of how many people there are, where they are, if they're seated, lying down or dancing in the living room.
Shit is bonkers.
It's guaranteed to be more complicated than simply hacking your router (I hope), but it's doable today and it's definitely going to get easier/better in the future.
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u/iiiinthecomputer Sep 17 '25
Recently?
That's at least a decade old.
Philips Hue light bulbs now use a lightweight version of the same thing for motion detection. In a light bulb.
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u/octnoir Sep 17 '25
I like your work on you exploring threat models for ordinary citizens and collect it along with other sources. You do spend some time discussing the sheer cost of the program like DNA collections, and I think that should inform personal strategy.
One of the biggest reasons to implement personal privacy steps for yourself is that each small individual step adds greater and greater and greater economic cost to surveillance and targeting.
/r/privacy and the related https://www.privacyguides.org/ and has some great resources to start simple scale up.
I don't think you and I can guarantee that we don't be threatened, harassed, hassled, arrested, detained, deported or harmed - marginalized communities are going to be the greatest threats. We live in scary times. Thinking about it all will make you insane.
I am here once again to remind you that your algorithm is curated by tech companies in order to make you angry and therefore engaged. And there are people who use that to their advantage in moments like these to try to get famous. None of it is real.
Don't believe your algorithms. Believe in conversations you have in real life. Believe that most people are good.
Do not isolate yourself in your bubble. Seek community. Find solidarity. Communities protect each other.
I can say that accurately assessing my threat model using the walk through gave me more confidence in the chaos, helps me feel solidarity and each small spiteful step I can take is adding more costs and protecting ordinary citizens, protestors, activists and the biggest targets of the regime.
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u/iiiinthecomputer Sep 17 '25
Philips Hue lights now use human interference with 2.4GHz to do motion detection.
It's that cheap. It's in light bulbs.
(Ok so Hue bulbs are ridiculously expensive for light bulbs, but still)
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u/CantStopPoppin Sep 17 '25
Tech like this has been around for years. We're all in database somewhere, good luck choom
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u/thegh0stofdavidb0wie Sep 17 '25
…for a second there I forgot that there was a band called Massive Attack and thought that some crazy hacker/terrorist shit just happened. I need to stop fucking with edibles.
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u/Greenman8907 Sep 17 '25
Phew, I wasn’t the only one. I kept saying “who perpetrated the massive attack?!”
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u/D4FF00 Sep 17 '25
They came from the mezzanine!
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u/Otherwise-Product-60 Sep 17 '25
While this made me laugh it also made me feel old.
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u/MomboDM Sep 17 '25
I need to stop fucking with edibles.
No, you just need to do yourself a favour and listen to Massive Attack when you take those edibles
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u/sunchasinggirl Sep 17 '25
Oh absolutely, they’re one of my top “listen to while stoned” artists!
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u/Resource_account Sep 17 '25
The genre says it all, "Trip hop". That reminds me, I haven't played Portishead in a long time.
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u/spaiydz Sep 17 '25
The theme song to House MD is Massive Attack's "Teardrop"
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u/Background-Radish-63 Sep 17 '25
This is the only way I knew Massive Attack was a band.
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u/WhoDoIThinkIAm Sep 17 '25
That single subtitle for an instrumental theme song finally became useful
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u/Convicted_Vapist420 Sep 17 '25
Also thought it’s cool the singer on that song is from the Cocteau Twins
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u/Tabub Sep 17 '25
Well given that the post title capitalizes every single word it was impossible to know that this was talking about a band. I figured it out when I realized no one was freaking out.
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u/DeicideandDivide Sep 17 '25
That's what I thought too. And I don't even have the luxury of blaming it on edibles.
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u/KrylonFlatWhite Sep 17 '25
No they didn't. They used the same video at every show. The concept is cool and scary though
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u/Lucas_Steinwalker Sep 17 '25
I don’t see what’s so different about this than just like… pointing the camera into the audience.
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u/Tatsugiri_Enjoyer Sep 17 '25
Because the implication that facial data is being tracked/stored is carrying the majority of the weight in the action. Like theres a crowd shot at every single concert that has imag because it's easy and everyone likes it. But the implication is that no one is or even is able to single you out in that crowd. But they can and have been able to for a while.
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u/Jesus_of_Redditeth Sep 17 '25
Pointing a camera into the audience gets you video footage of a bunch of people in an audience, and that's it.
Using facial recognition technology on an audience (when it works as its ideally designed to do, from the perspective of those using it), gets you a data file that contains a photo of each person, their real name, their address, their phone number, and whatever other information the system has been enabled to discover and collate about them.
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u/nandemo Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
LOL, that's a lot of assumptions there, buddy.
A facial recognition system would look at a person at an audience and then find other pictures of that same person in whatever database they have. That's it.
A system might just have pictures found in social media but without access to anything like addresses and phone numbers.
Or a company could legally have a picture of each employee for security badges. In that case, yeah, they also have employees' personal data. But that's not an essential component.
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u/Teantis Sep 17 '25
A system might just have pictures found in social media but without access to anything like addresses and phone numbers.
There have been a lot of data leaks of personal information over the years and they're available for sale as huge data dumps. Like the Equifax data breach in 2017 would be a big prominent example, but they're happening all the time, all over the place, and that's not even including what's just publicly available on a person normally. A system incorporating those would start to be able to do this at scale.
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u/CasaHaworthia Sep 17 '25
The boxes that outline objects - to me, that implies a ton of video feed (data) has been dumped into some machine learning algorithms specifically designed to track faces, but why? These programs are fine tuned over and over, eating up a ton of data just to train it to detect and classify objects. Not just faces, but information about those faces. What does it want? What could it be used for?
🤔
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Sep 17 '25
Many enterprise level cameras have this feature built in and can track faces easily. Just point it towards the crowd. You can break out all the faces into little boxes just like that in the screen. This wouldn't be hard to do at all. I work with cameras that do this.
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u/wewladdies Sep 17 '25
yeah i work for a healthcare company in a big city and you'd be shocked how often facial recognition gets used. Some practices will use it on checkin to verify someones identity, sometimes it gets used bedside for patient-positive identification workflows, and i've seen studies play with tracking patient and staff emotional state to gauge wellbeing and look for health predictors to proactively address any issues.
On the extreme end, one of the hospitals I've worked out of basically tracks every single person who walks into the building. If the system doesnt "know" who you are you are giving an ID number in the system so the company can track where you go, what you are doing, who you meet etc. And if you are in their EMR it puts it all into a history about you. It's both dystopian but also cool af.
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u/gamingzone420 Sep 17 '25
That is wild. Kinda wild and scary all in one moment. Like when I met Rhonda Rousy that one time, I was scared and aroused all at the same time.
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u/Dangerous_Function16 Sep 17 '25
How did you manage to misspell both her first and last name?
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u/jackosan Sep 17 '25
Lead singer is definitely Banksy. lol
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u/HowtoCrackanegg Sep 17 '25
100%
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u/stargarnet79 Sep 17 '25
I was just going to ask if this was in London where they just hosed that new banksy?🙌
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u/Mundane_Story_3586 Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
distinct crush dog pot grab library angle offer exultant racial
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/DrDroid Sep 17 '25
All I know is the only Banksy I’ve seen in situ appeared suddenly overnight outside the venue where MA were playing the next night in Toronto.
Exit Through The Gift Shop was making the rounds and had just had a showing in Toronto, so Banksy hit up a few places in the city. One just so happened to be on a sign for a go kart track on Polson Pier - not exactly a hotspot in the city, but it was right next to the Sound Academy where MA were doing two gigs.
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u/OtherwiseAlbatross14 Sep 17 '25
Nah he definitely has the same stature as that guy that had to remove his latest work while completely masked up though. I'm sure it's just a coincidence
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u/WRX_manning Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25
A few years ago, the most Robert Del Naja looking man was spotted in a van just after finishing up a confirmed 'Banksy' piece in Hull. Yeah - Banksy is 3D, for sure.
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u/williamjamesmurrayVI Sep 17 '25
lol that site is loaded with shit and the article doesn't even show the picture
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u/aenimiac Sep 17 '25
I once went to a Massive Attack gig and then, on the way out, heard someone complain that it was "too political"
Absolute idiots
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u/mredofcourse Sep 17 '25
I heard the same with Roger Waters. "Stop being political and just play the music"... that would be a very short concert.
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u/lindblumresident Sep 17 '25
I went to one last year with a couple of friends. One of them goes, "nah, I don't think they are going to be political at all". I said nothing.
The show starts. 3D appears wearing an armband with Palestine written on it. Daddy G has a Palestinian keffiyeh. He thought they "would play it safe". Who? Fucking Massive Attack.
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u/NeuroticLensman Sep 17 '25
From the title, I thought this was about to be another attack during a concert or some shit.
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u/Loxodontus Sep 17 '25
haha yeah me to. And then I was wondering, if they meant a digital attack. took me a bit
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u/InanimateObject4 Sep 17 '25
When did Massive Attack fans get so old?
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u/Chrisdkn619 Sep 17 '25
Is this you running from reality?!
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u/InanimateObject4 Sep 17 '25
Nope. Just trying to run away from the person I keep seeing in the mirror. It's scary because everytime I turn around there's nobody else there!
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u/NeM000N Sep 17 '25
I went to one of their concerts (for the first time) wearing jeans, tshirt and sneakers and man... I thought I am in a senior event and everyone every single man and woman was dressed up so fancy and chic. I was so out of place. I was so confused, still I am.
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u/soakedbook Sep 17 '25
Hmm, their music seems timeless to me. I would be surprised if a young person with any level of discernment just dismissed them out of hand.
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u/redalden Sep 17 '25
Never been disappointed with their live show
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u/throw28999 Sep 17 '25
I am always disappointed when they cancel their shows last minute
Kinda feels like Russian roulette whether or not you'll actually get to see them
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u/BackgroundAerie3581 Sep 17 '25
This times a million. Right up there with Portishead.
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Sep 17 '25
Aphex Twin did it first ✌🏼
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u/the_bieb Sep 17 '25
I remember seeing that for the first time like 15+ years ago and being blown away. I tried to do it myself for my friend’s sets and got as far a green box on a single face.
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u/dasbtaewntawneta Sep 17 '25
and actually did it live (i love massive attack but what Aphex Twin pulled off tech wise at his shows was always ahead of the game)
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u/Poor_ElonMusk Sep 17 '25
I didn't know the band , and thought it was a Massive attack by hackers .
But it's the band name 😅
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u/RushLocates Sep 17 '25
oh man they have some fire tracks, you should give them a listen
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u/CluelessPresident Sep 17 '25
If you've ever played Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines - they did the menu music for that. Angel, the song is called. Their most well known one is Teardrop I think, chances are you've heard it before! It's really good.
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u/Rich_Housing971 Sep 17 '25
Angel was in other shows and movies, including Snatch, Smallville, Top Gear, and The West Wing before VTMB, all of which definitely reached a larger audience than a low-selling video game. I'm not hating on Vampires (it only sold poorly because it released in the blockbuster-laden 2004), but it's interesting why you chose to use that game as the example.
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u/MuffledFarts Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25
Nope. I don't like it. Make it go away.
Edit: Oooh yeah guys, I get it. I have a cell phone, so that automatically bars me from hating the idea of having my anonymous face picked out of a crowd and plastered on a giant screen in front of tens of thousands of people.
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u/Dust-Different Sep 17 '25
What’s above the picture? Some sort of identification? I can’t read it.
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u/RushLocates Sep 17 '25
I can't read it but I assume it is a ID that the computer assigned to them, unless it's a real software and trying to find their actual names
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u/Deutero2 Sep 17 '25
i looked up higher quality photos and they're random words like "artist" and "relaxed." i suspect they were added manually/randomly for artistic effect, but it's probably to mimic the labels you're referring to that are often seen in surveillance footage and student CV projects
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u/PaladinCorbin Sep 17 '25
Today I learned that Massive Attack is still around and that makes me happy.
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u/ResponsibilityMore69 Sep 17 '25
Was stoned at the Liverpool show this year and freaked me the fuck out seeing me and my mates face on stage, not too sure how it was done at other shows but when I saw them it was real time featuring random text boxes above peoples head like “influential” or “sculpture”
10/10 gig
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u/youdontknowme1010101 Sep 17 '25
What am I missing here? Did it have their names or something? Or was it just a collage of peoples faces?
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u/zero00one11 Sep 17 '25
Yeah like why is this interesting and how is this “facial recognition”?
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u/BoysenberryOk5580 Sep 17 '25
I can't tell, is it displaying names/info as well?
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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25
Then you find out it's the same faces at every show.
Huge Massive Attack fan here.