A screenshot of how the face-blurring technology works.
In an effort to make posting video on YouTube safer for activists, YouTube has announced a new tool that automatically obscures faces.
“Whether you want to share sensitive protest footage without exposing the faces of the activists involved, or share the winning point in your 8-year-old’s basketball game without broadcasting the children’s faces to the world, our face blurring technology is a first step towards providing visual anonymity for video on YouTube,” Amanda Conway, a policy associate at YouTube wrote in a blog post.
She added: “YouTube is proud to be a destination where people worldwide come to share their stories, including activists. Along with efforts like the Human Rights Channel and Citizentube that curate these voices, we hope that the new technologies we’re rolling out will facilitate the sharing of even more stories on our platform.”
YouTube has been particularly important in Syria, where the opposition has used it to document protests and government offensives against civilians. It has also used the video site to organize.
In her blog post, Conway added that the technology was imperfect and that activists should still take other precautions to remain safe.
Article source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/07/18/156987232/to-help-dissidents-youtube-introduces-face-blurring-tool?ft=1&f=1001