Juggalo makeup has the power to beat certain facial recognition

"Juggalos," the devoted fan base of cult rap group Insane Clown Posse, all hold the key to evading facial recognition techs used in police surveillance, The Outline reported on Monday. It lies in the colored face paint juggalos frequently sport in homage to the rap group. Twitter user @tahkion claims the style is too much for the algorithms controlling the technology:

To identify an individual, @tahkion explained, facial recognition software relies on "landmarks" on the human face. The key to the deception lies in the face paint on the front of the juggalo's chin: it boosts the contrast, causing facial recognition tech to miss where the jawline begins and ends. To match with a make-up picture already in a database, the two face paint styles would have to be exactly the same. Other forms of make up, like the corpse paint associated with black metal, won't trick the computers.

The make-up's recognition-busting capabilities has likely already come in handy for the juggalos: last year, a group of I.C.P. fans, many in face paint, converged in Washington, D.C. to protest the F.B.I.'s classification of juggalos as a gang (as Think Progress notes, facial recognition is being used to identify protestors in the United States, and can even work on ones who conceal their faces with scarves). An appeal to change the F.B.I.'s definition was denied in December.