When protecting someone’s identity, why do some photo’s only have a black bar covering the eyes? Why not just blur/hide the entire face to not risk the small chance someone may actually identity them?
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Because the publication is not actually interested in protecting the person identity but must make some effort to appear that they have.
Because eyes are actually a defining feature of a person.
Faces have a lot of defining features. Hiding the eyes would sometimes suffice to hide the identity of a person.
You can’t possibly think that the protected person is someone else based on their mouth and nose, would you? You still won’t have high confidence.
On top of that, audience thinks it’s more believable that the person is real. Vs blurring the whole face, it could be Donald trump or the show producer behind the blur for all we know
This is a very old technique that has been used by newspapers, most likely pre-dating modern photo editing software.
One explanation I have heard is that they used physical tape such as Rubylith ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubylith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubylith)) on a photo in the darkroom to prepare them for layout and printing.
Today, photo editing software often emulates this method digitally.
The eyes are the most recognizable part of the face, without the eyes a person will not be identified.
I read once that it is really difficult to recognize someone when you can’t see their eyes (I think it was because your brain doesn’t fully see it as a face). So anyone who still knows who it is from that picture would also know from just reading “John D.”.
On a related note, if the suspect asks for the file there is often a lot of personal data from the victim in there. So there has been a proposal that victims can ask to be made anonymous in the files, and to distinguish them from the suspect they would get a white bar. (but this was in our papers in February, and than covid got big, so I guess that is getting delayed)
In the Green Lantern with Ryan Reynolds, his friend points out his eye mask is useless, commenting, “I’ve known you my whole life! You thought I wouldn’t recognize you because I couldn’t see your cheekbones?!”
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