I became fascinated by the fact that well-known faces can still be recognised even when coarsely pixelated.
The BBC commissioned some guidelines from me about how best to provide anonymity for people using various digital techniques, whilst still showing their faces as faces.
I later contributed a piece for a BBC programme about a family persecuted because they had been inadvertently identified by misuse of this technique. The programme was pulled, the day before broadcast, because it was potentially ’embarrassing’.
Video recordings make it even more difficult to anonymise participants’ faces.
