Ride the Lightning

Website Publishes Every Face From Parler’s Capitol Assault Videos

January 26, 2021

Wired reported on January 20 that, when hackers recently exploited a bug in Parler to download all of the right-wing social media platform's contents, they were surprised to find that many of the pictures and videos contained geolocation metadata showing exactly how many of the site's users had taken part in the assault on the US Capitol on January 6. The videos also contained thousands of images of unmasked faces, many of whom participated in the Capitol riot. Now a new website called Faces of the Riot has catalogued and published all of those faces in a single, easy-to-browse lineup.

The website shows nothing but a vast grid of more than 6,000 images of faces, each one tagged only with a string of characters associated with the Parler video in which it appeared. The site's creator told WIRED that he used simple open source machine learning and facial recognition software to detect, extract, and deduplicate every face from the 827 videos that were posted to Parler from inside and outside the Capitol building on January 6. The creator of Faces of the Riot says his goal is to allow anyone to easily sort through the faces pulled from those videos to identify someone they may know or recognize who took part in the mob, or even to reference the collected faces against FBI wanted posters and send a tip to law enforcement if they spot someone.

"Everybody who is participating in this violence, what really amounts to an insurrection, should be held accountable," says the site's creator, who asked for anonymity to avoid retaliation. "It's entirely possible that a lot of people who were on this website now will face real-life consequences for their actions."

There are of course privacy concerns. Faces of the Riot's original posting of faces didn't distinguish between lawbreakers—who trampled barriers, broke into the Capitol building, and trespassed in legislative chambers—and people who merely attended the protests outside. An upgrade to the site added hyperlinks from faces to the video source, so that visitors can click on any face and see what the person was filmed doing on Parler. The Faces of the Riot creator, who says he's a college student in the "greater DC area," intends that added feature to help contextualize every face's inclusion on the site and differentiate between bystanders, peaceful protesters, and violent insurrectionists.

He told WIRED that he and a cocreator are working to scrub "non-rioter" faces, including those of police and press who were present. A message at the top of the site also warns against vigilante investigations, suggesting users report those they recognize to the FBI, with a link to an FBI tip page.

Faces of the Riot represents the serious privacy dangers of pervasive facial recognition technology, said Evan Greer, the campaign director for digital civil liberties nonprofit Fight for the Future. "Whether it's used by an individual or by the government, this technology has profound implications for human rights and freedom of expression," says Greer, whose organization has fought for a legislative ban on facial recognition technologies. "I think it would be an enormous mistake if we come out of this moment by glorifying or lionizing a technology that, broadly speaking, disproportionately harms communities of color, low-income communities, immigrant communities, Muslim communities, activists … the very same people that the faces on this website stormed the Capitol for the purpose of silencing and disenfranchising."

The privacy dangers are clear. I am torn between wanting those who committed crimes during the January 6 assault to be held accountable and my concern for future uses of this technology.

Hat tip to Dave Ries.

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
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Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
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