Britain's Most Tattooed Man Says Uk's Age Check Told Him to "remove His Face"

Posted2 months agoActive2 months ago

xyzzy3000

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52 comments

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Age VerificationFacial RecognitionSurveillance

Key topics

Age Verification

Facial Recognition

Surveillance

Britain's most tattooed man encountered issues with the UK's age check system, sparking a discussion on the limitations and potential consequences of facial recognition technology.

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01Story posted
Oct 24, 2025 at 4:10 AM EDT
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Discussion (52 comments)

Showing 41 comments of 52

etiennebausson

2 months ago

3 replies

Remove his face mask, not remove his face.

I swear, the quality of some journalism is so shameless.

jibal

2 months ago

The journalism here is fine.

beejiu

2 months ago

The face mask was his face.

tobr

2 months ago

That part of the title is in quotes. It’s paraphrasing how the guy expressed it to point out the absurdness of being asked to remove a face mask when you’re not wearing a face mask.

sjw987

2 months ago

3 replies

The chap basically has a permanent version of those clothing items that confuse security cameras.

Perhaps we'll see more people sporting this look in the future.

monegator

2 months ago

1 reply

A few years ago, i think 2018, i was in munich and as usual i went to see the mueum of technology. They had this exibition about the future of surveillance as seen by cyberpunk artists and there was this part about hair style and makeup that would confuse face detection algorythms. It was brillant, but i never managed to find it again. I hope the hivemind here remembers or can point me in the right direction

voidUpdate

2 months ago

1 reply

I think the keywords you want are "cv dazzle". The ones I've seen are inspired by dazzle camouflage, but if you wear them out in public I think that people will be more likely to pay attention to you, even if ai camera systems are less likely to

monegator

2 months ago

The point of the exibition was also to raise awareness, and speculated that in the future it would not be that unusual to see people wear camouflage

And this was before the cursed AI timeline we're living in right now

jamesbelchamber

2 months ago

https://xkcd.com/1105/

sunrunner

2 months ago

CV Dazzle? If so, what are the real implications for the legality of CV Dazzle or equivalents? The 'most tattooed man' example obviously can seem like not much of a real problem for everyday people that haven't gone to that extreme, but I worry that any outcome from this will transform into other areas such as deliberate camouflage for, say, activists and protestors.

CuriouslyC

2 months ago

3 replies

We're entering a world where hacking facial recognition is going to be a big thing. People are going to start wearing masks in public because of ICE, and to avoid repercussions for going to protests, and that's going to normalize a slippery slope. We're going to end up all Anonymous.

LeoPanthera

2 months ago

2 replies

Countries with internet age verification don't have ICE.

At least for now.

rsynnott

2 months ago

I thought a bunch of US states had it? IIRC there was a fuss a while back about Pornhub blocking them.

walthamstow

2 months ago

During the last UK election, Channel 4 went undercover with the Reform team in Clacton and captured some interesting video including Farage's aide saying "when Reform are in government, our police officers will be paramilitaries"

The aide still works for Reform.

https://www.channel4.com/news/exclusive-undercover-inside-re...

jalapenos

2 months ago

Good time to put money into neck gaiters

Cthulhu_

2 months ago

That's not new though.

amelius

2 months ago

1 reply

Add this to:

Falsehoods lawmakers believe about faces.

vaylian

2 months ago

2 replies

Also: Falsehoods lawmakers believe about bodies.

Conservative politicians tend to be transphobic, because they can't understand that biology makes exceptions.

amelius

2 months ago

Conservative politicians mostly do that because it works great as a populist instrument.

array_key_first

2 months ago

Our bodies and minds are the most complex machines on Earth. They make computers look trivial.

Stuff goes wrong or different, like, a lot. A lot of the time.

tobr

2 months ago

3 replies

I wonder how it might affect people with medical conditions that make their faces look unusual. If the law only applies to pornography, most people in that situation might not want to go talk to a journalist about it.

eesmith

2 months ago

1 reply

Not well. "When Face Recognition Doesn’t Know Your Face Is a Face An estimated 100 million people live with facial differences. As face recognition tech becomes widespread, some say they’re getting blocked from accessing essential systems and services." https://www.wired.com/story/when-face-recognition-doesnt-kno...

Posted to HN yesterday at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45667472 . No comments.

mcherm

2 months ago

1 reply

> Posted to HN yesterday [...] No comments.

I wonder if that is partially because many (like myself) aren't subscribers and can't read the article.

eesmith

2 months ago

I am not a subscriber. In LibreWolf I went to the page then switched to reader mode.

delaminator

2 months ago

1 reply

Then they supply govt. ID.

The law does not mandate check via camera.

Hizonner

2 months ago

How about "Then Ofcom fucks off, and the Government apologizes for its stupidity and moves to repeal the OSA"?

cykros

2 months ago

Especially when firing up a VPN and not providing anyone their ID is so trivial.

isodev

2 months ago

1 reply

While I can imagine this is very frustrating, I think we can definitely see "facial accessories" becoming more mainstream as ways to evade "unsolicited surveillance". Like... imagine someone invents glasses with an outward looking camera that can stream all their surroundings without proper opt-in consent (where this is required).

spoiler

2 months ago

I can't tell if it's a sarcastic joke, but just in case it isn't and you want a bit of free anxiety with your coffee: the future is now, old man!

Flere-Imsaho

2 months ago

1 reply

Gary's Mod (a videogame that uses the Half Life 2 engine) is being used to bypass these live face checkers [0]. It's primitive, but I can see in the future full-on AI driven face generation doing this job. It'll basically become a arms race between the checking technology and the fake face generation.

[0] https://www.flexposer.com/

jimbohn

2 months ago

It's truly saddening that we have to solve this problem technically, whereas it should have been solved politically (or better, this absurd thing should never have been considered). The fact that it can be slightly contained by more technically capable people is worse, because instead of shocking everyone all at once it allows you to boil the frog as a politician.

delaminator

2 months ago

1 reply

The UK's Online Safety Act requires website owners to verify ages but it doesn't prescribe specific methods for doing so.

It is the vendor supplying the website he is visiting that told him to do that.

Hizonner

2 months ago

1 reply

> The UK's Online Safety Act requires website owners to verify ages but it doesn't prescribe specific methods for doing so.

... and just ignores the fact that there are no sane or remotely appropriate ways to implement that. As well as the fact that it's a silly goal to begin with.

> It is the vendor supplying the website he is visiting that told him to do that.

... after making a guess as to what would be the least bad way of implementing this foolish mandate.

delaminator

2 months ago

Seem you want to talk to the UK govt. not to me.

Cthulhu_

2 months ago

1 reply

Facial recognition, biometrics and ID verification are all flawed systems, based on a government or country that is running behind in digitization. In other countries, government operated digital identity management systems are integrated already [0], and banks provide age verification systems that protect your identity and don't involve uploading your ID or mugshot to one of many 3rd parties [1]. It's basically like an online payment, but instead of "I confirm this has been paid" it's a "I confirm this user is 18+" signal.

I don't understand why these new age check systems are years behind on technological reality.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiD

[1] https://www.idin.nl/en/

NaomiLehman

2 months ago

1 reply

I think the pretty reliable method of biometrics are fingerprints, right? Not great online, but can't really be altered in real life.

I'm not proposing to use them online, just thinking that they work really well with borders/passports. Very difficult to beat these checks.

hactually

2 months ago

and what if they leak? how do you cycle those creds?

jamesbelchamber

2 months ago

This was never necessary - Yoti (which I think is being used in this case) has a tool that allows you to validate your identity to them, and then use that to validate only that you're over 18 to third parties. Yivi (a Dutch non-profit) even has an open source version, and it works really well.

I have no clue why these "facial age estimation" technologies are being pushed in place of that. They're much worse in terms of privacy and accuracy, and they're easier to trick if you want to bypass them.

n1b0m

2 months ago

Maybe he could use a Kier Starmer mask.

chao-

2 months ago

There's a deep irony in that his tattoos make him more uniquely identifiable than the average person.

metalman

2 months ago

thisakes the news because the man has a bit of celebrity to draw on, but there will be many people going through countless versions of bieng rejected, and then bieng flat out refused ANY help trying to comply with the utterly flawed premise built on half assed technology, that has been rushed through legislation in order to make dedperate political powers feel like they are in controll. as the british say in a droll fashion, fuck off.

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