Signal’s new blur tool will help hide protesters’ identities

Secure messaging app Signal has announced a new in-app blur tool that will allow users to censor faces in photos before sharing them. The feature is being introduced to protect protesters currently demonstrating against police brutality by helping to hide their identities.

“Right now, people around the world are marching and protesting against racism and police brutality, outraged by the most recent police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor,” Signal wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. “At Signal, we support the people who have gone into the streets to make their voices heard.” 

Floyd died on May 25 after Minneapolis police handcuffed him and knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Taylor died on March 13 after Louisville police entered her home and shot her multiple times. They are just two among countless black people who have been needlessly assaulted or killed by law enforcement, sparking the widespread protests.

Many feel it important that the civilians currently protesting are able to remain anonymous, as police have largely responded to the protests with further unprovoked violence, and law enforcement has form when it comes to using facial recognition technology, as does ICE. 

As such, Signal’s blur tool will enable users to censor photos before sharing them, obscuring protesters’ faces so they can’t be easily identified.

The new blur feature will be able to automatically detect and hide faces in an image, with all processing taking place on the user’s phone to ensure security. Signal users will also be able to manually censor parts of a photo by tapping on the blur tool in the image editor. Face-detecting software isn’t always perfect, so this will allow users to pick up any faces that might have been missed.

The update will roll out “as soon as possible” on both the Android and iOS Signal apps, having already been submitted to the app stores.

Signal has seen significantly increased traffic over the past few days. The encrypted messaging app has been downloaded thousands of times since Floyd was killed and the protests began, with 121,000 downloads in the U.S. alone. This may be partially because Signal doesn’t keep its users’ message data, making it ideal for those concerned the law enforcement might try to subpoena their chat logs.

In further support of the protestors, Signal has also announced they are currently looking into manufacturing masks and distributing them for free. Details are currently being finalised, with more information to come.

As the company’s blog post noted, “One immediate thing seems clear: 2020 is a pretty good year to cover your face.”