Mask ID

With Mask.ID you avoid automatic face recognition.

At train stations, airports and myriad other public places, surveillance is being expanded. New police laws allow in a preventive policing strategy mass collection and storage of data,that does not demand explicit cause for suspicion. Biometric data is stored in a European database and used for automated facial recognition. We help you to protect yourself.

Create your Mask.ID

To participate in Mask ID, you must provide your portrait to us. With each uploaded photo, the service becomes more precise and anonymous for all users. Do you agree that your picture will be stored in our database?

Take back your identity.

We hacked the Bundesdruckerei and had a passport printed in which two people can be identified: the EU Commissioner for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, and a penguin from our team. Now Frederica Mogherini and one of our team members can travel around the world with the same passport. If we are able to do this, rich and powerful companies and states will also be able to access and manipulate personal data.

Each person’s biometric data is unique. They can now serve as a password, login or travel authorization. Every person who applies for a passport or ID card provides fingerprints and facial recognition data that are incorporated into government databases. Any database can be hacked - fingerprints and iris scans are already popular commercial goods that are pulled by companies. Those who have access to them can also copy and deposit them at a crime scene in order to implicate innocent people: the uninvolved becoming persecuted. But mafiosis are not our biggest problem.

Our own authorities are working flat out to merge existing databases. Where previously, strict rules applied what may happen with our biometric data, under the pretext of fighting crime, the rules now changed. Under the remit of policing, more and more authorities can access this expanding data base. As the technological means to monitor and control us are becoming more and more comprehensive, so is the possibility of arbitrarily harming unpleasant critics.

It is time to put an end to this development. To empower us with our data, to shape our identity ourselves. To flood the databases with misinformation, to avoid automatic recognition, to bring administrators of these databases to our site, and to determine our own data.

Join Mask.ID!.

Is it legal to use a "Mask.ID" as a passport photo?
We don‘t know, because such a case has not yet been tried in court. There are some arguments in favour and some against. What is certain is that this is a political issue, not a purely legal one. However, we strongly recommend not to try it for yourself yet, but wait until we have a precedent with our case.
What kind of photos do you have in the database?
We are constantly collecting new photos. Our collection is filtered editorially so that only "usable" photos are stored. For starters, we have included the photos of people whom we believe will not oppose the construction of a totalitarian state, such as Horst Seehofer, Beatrix von Storch, Matteo Salvini.
What happens to my photo?
We use your photo to morph with others. We do not associate your photo with any other information such as email or IP address. We guarantee that nobody but the Peng! Collective has access to the database. Your photo will be automatically deleted from the database at the end of the project, or after 12 months at the latest.
The picture could be erm...better?
Totally annoying! At the moment the photos look worse again. We have to filter a lot of scrap from the database at the moment, but it will get better again, promise. Could also be that the Nazis simply predominate in our database at the moment. That´s always making things ugly.

You did what?
We have created a passport, which contains a morph of two people: the EU Commisioner Mogherini, and a member of the Peng Collective. So one part of the morphed face belongs to the EU Commissioner Mogherini, half to a person from the Peng collective. We invite the EU Commissioner to stand up for the rights of all those who, because of their passports, are marginalised and dehumanised to the point of drowning in the Mediterranean, rather than afforded safe travel here by plane. Our intention is to show that the EU has a responsibility that it is not fulfilling at the moment. If things go on like this, we have to find other ways of enabling people to travel
Who is actually allowed to access my passport photo?
After the amendment of the "Law for the Promotion of Electronic Identity" passed in July 2017, the police authorities of the federal and state governments, the Military Counter-Intelligence Service, the Federal Intelligence Service, the constitutional protection authorities of the federal and state governments, tax investigation offices of the federal states, the customs investigation service and the main customs offices may directly access the photographs stored by the registration authorities. The direct digital access for the "fulfilment of their tasks" does not have to be justified, and a judicial examination is not necessary. It is conceivable that political friends of individual employees* in managerial positions may also occasionally be given access.
Isn't it good to be able to search the databases of all people to find neo-Nazis, for example?
In conceiving of a just coexistence, one must always consider what to protect, and what to give up. Any database, can be abused by repressive states, or hacked by those who want to steal the data. Any database that has been set up can be abused by repressive states or criminals who steal the data. To offer a few examples: fingerprints can be replicated and deposited at a crime scene without the person ever having been there; You can use frequent flyer programs with copied iris data records without showing your passport; And when searching for neo-Nazis, you can also identify the wrong people with the right data records. The presumption of innocence is a valuable asset, as is the protection of groups of people with certain characteristics, particulary when those come to be perceived as ‚threatening’. As more and more voters* are campaigning for a totalitarian state, we should be particularly vigilant about the instruments we build, and the legislative powers that this political system has at its disposal.
Oh. But they're mainly looking for child murderers, aren't they?
The countering of terror and the murder of children, are prominent in the demagogic arguments through which these databases are legitimated and created. In practice, however, the authorities do not shy away from fingerprinting children from profiled groups, who are themselves under duress. One example is the Eurodac database, which contains around five million fingerprints of asylum seekers. Almost 48 million fingerprints are stored in the Visa Information System (VIS) set up in 2011. The data of the supposed inviting person will also be collected, regardless of age or innocence. It is planned to process the biometric data of children from the age of six (previously: from the age of 14).
Okay, now don't make such a fuss. Surely they only look for a murderers once or twice a year, don't they?
It would be nice, if that were true. Biometric face recognition has been used for ten years in criminal investigations at the BKA. This face recognition system (GES) queries the information system INPOL-Zentral, where currently more than 4 million searchable photos from recognition service treatments are stored. For 2017, the Federal Ministry of the Interior reported 26,879 searches.
Why don't they tell me what my photo is used for when I hand it in?
An old sleight of hand: they simply change the earmarking afterwards. This is the case with VIS and Eurodac, and now also with the Schengen Information System (SIS II). The SIS is the largest European police database in which around 76 million people and objects are searched. But we, from Mask.ID, stick to the DSGVO!
Your website admin said that the biggest problem was the new grid search. What does she mean by that?
Where do you know her from? Okay, look. That's a bit complicated, but a very important point. The large EU databases are now to be merged (together with two other information systems). Under the heading "interoperability", the Commission presented a draft regulation on this subject. This mainly concerns biometric data. Fingerprints and facial images that already exist in Eurodac, the Schengen Information System or the visa database will then be stored together with the corresponding personal data in a "common identity memory" and will also be searchable there. A "common service for the comparison of biometric data", which runs in the background and checks each new entry against existing data, is also planned. If fingerprints or facial images already exist for a person, the qualitatively better ones will be retained. A single "European search portal" is foreseen, which will search several databases at the same time when a police request is made. Finally, a "Multiple Identity Detector" will be introduced to compare fingerprints and facial images with personal data. The merging of the "data pots" was a project of the former German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (CDU), and it is for the implementation of his project that the regulations of Eurodac, SIS II and VIS are now being amended.
The establishment of the Central System on Interoperability is expected to cost at least €425 million over the next ten years, with further funding needed to connect the national systems in each Member State. Technical implementation could begin in 2020. As with the new EES, large orders for the security industry are awaiting, and the companies Bundesdruckerei, Idemia (Morpho), Gemalto and Sopra Steria are likely to apply for the national and central systems.
Ultimately, the super database is a permanent dragnet investigation. Statewatch criticizes the plans for a "common identity memory" as disproportionate, since real security gains could not be proven by the measure. In contrast, the "appetite" of the security authorities to set up central databases for biometric features and to network the systems or make them interoperable is already foreseeable. The purpose limitation of the respective data storage is thereby undermined.
This process cannot be reversed, so intervention is urgently needed.

With Mask.ID you avoid automatic face recognition.

Create your Mask.ID

Take back your identity.

Is it legal to use a "Mask.ID" as a passport photo?

What kind of photos do you have in the database?

What happens to my photo?

The picture could be erm...better?

You did what?

Who is actually allowed to access my passport photo?

Isn't it good to be able to search the databases of all people to find neo-Nazis, for example?

Oh. But they're mainly looking for child murderers, aren't they?

Okay, now don't make such a fuss. Surely they only look for a murderers once or twice a year, don't they?

Why don't they tell me what my photo is used for when I hand it in?

Your website admin said that the biggest problem was the new grid search. What does she mean by that?