Paolo Cirio (IT)
For Obscurity Paolo Cirio cloned mug shots of over 15 million U.S. prison inmates from various websites and then disguised the photos. An algorithm systematically scrambled the appurtenant information—name, age, crime convicted of and length of sentence—to make each individual completely unrecognizable.
Visitors to the cloned websites can get actively involved in this too and decide whether it should continue to be possible to query and find a person’s mug shot and personal data or whether they should be removed from the search engines. Thus, Cirio uses artistic means to come out in favor of an individual’s right to determine whether his/her personal data is to be deleted from the internet.
