Three years after HRIF.EU began,
Today HRIF.EU celebrates its third anniversary. We decided to mark that moment by opensourcing BLURR-ID!, an open symbol and protocol designed to give people a clear way to express that they do not wish to be identified, analysed, tagged or otherwise turned into data.
Our ambition is deliberately large: we want BLURR-ID! to develop into a universal expression of no consent — understandable by people, usable by communities and, ultimately, recognisable by cameras and AI systems.
smart glasses are erasing our right to refuse,
The need for BLURR-ID! is becoming urgent. On 21 August, CBS News reported the case of Toluwa Omitowoju, who discovered that she had been secretly filmed by somebody wearing Meta AI smart glasses only after the resulting video started circulating online. Her description was simple: “I had no say.”
That sentence captures the problem. With a phone or conventional camera, people can often see that recording is taking place and object. Smart glasses increasingly remove that moment of refusal. Technology has made recording less visible.
so BLURR-ID! makes that refusal visible again,
The same issue has now reached the Dutch Parliament. Members Zwinkels and Straatman of Parliament recently asked whether a person wearing camera glasses could be required to switch them off or remove them when somebody nearby indicates that they do not wish to be filmed.
But that immediately raises a practical question: how should people express that preference? Must we identify every camera, approach every wearer, repeat our objection in every situation and in every language?
BLURR-ID! proposes a simple alternative: one recognisable signal that says, in effect, do not identify, analyse or tag me — blurr me or remove my data instead.
allows communities to set and use the boundaries,
This is not only about individuals. Communities should also be able to define their own boundaries. A school, conference, healthcare environment, demonstration, association or private gathering may decide that people present should not routinely become identifiable data merely because somebody is wearing a camera.
BLURR-ID! can therefore function at several levels: as an individual preference, as a community norm and eventually as a machine-readable instruction. The symbol itself does not magically create new law, and not every form of processing legally depends on consent. Its purpose is more fundamental: to make a person’s or community’s objection unequivocally clear and observable.
turns those boundaries into a question for regulators and courts,
That connects directly to the privacy position HRIF.EU published this summer. Looking at the G7 privacy regulators’ Paris communiqué, we concluded that regulators largely understand the risks of AI, smart glasses and pervasive surveillance, but show too little will to act. We argued specifically that devices capable of continuous or covert capture create structural surveillance risks and require intervention before harmful practices become infrastructure.
BLURR-ID! is our practical action to take things a step forward. Rather than waiting only for regulators to act, it gives citizens and communities a tool to establish the factual starting point themselves: the boundary was expressed — what did the organisation, technology provider or regulator do next?
and asks the world to teach AI to recognise NO!
We are open-sourcing BLURR-ID! so that privacy organisations, civil-rights groups, communities, researchers, lawyers and technology developers can use it, challenge it and improve it.
We also want to see it tested in practice — including, where necessary, through strategic litigation that clarifies what an explicit expression of no consent means when it is knowingly ignored. A universal symbol only becomes universal if others take it over.
IF AI can learn to recognise, tag and store our faces, voices and identities, it is high time it starts to recognize and use the BLURR-ID! symbol first. Because BLURR-ID! tells them not to.
Click here to go to the BLURR-ID! website.