
Some shirts hide you from cameras, but will anyone wear them? - pseudolus
https://arstechnica.com/features/2020/04/some-shirts-hide-you-from-cameras-but-will-anyone-wear-them/
======
prophesi
I ordered this specific anti-human recognition hoddie, and it actually looks
pretty awesome. It really only goes well with black/grey pants, though.

[https://www.rageon.com/products/ensemble-7](https://www.rageon.com/products/ensemble-7)

And Adversarial Fashion's anti-ALPR backpacks are cool looking as well.

[https://adversarialfashion.com/collections/bags/products/sta...](https://adversarialfashion.com/collections/bags/products/state-
plate-alpr-backpack)

Sadly, it's definitely much easier to push out a software update than it is to
replace your clothing. But that game of cat and mouse won't start until the
clothing becomes more commonplace, which is very doubtful.

~~~
DoreenMichele
For me at least, that first link has some NSFW content. (This is a courtesy
notice, not a criticism.)

Specifically, it shows a pair of leggings on a woman designed to look like a
naked man titled "David's Marble Legs":

[https://www.rageon.com/products/davids-marble-
legs?refSrc=43...](https://www.rageon.com/products/davids-marble-
legs?refSrc=4347638644824&nosto=productpage-nosto-1)

~~~
enriquto
> For me at least, that first link has some NSFW content.

> Specifically, it shows a pair of leggings on a woman designed to look like a
> naked man titled "David's Marble Legs":

But how is that NSFW? This is one of the most famous sculptures in western
art. Everybody has seen it. I had a photo of the David sculpture in the cover
of a history book when I was 11, given by our school. I find it _very_
disturbing, even creepy, that somebody may honestly think that this image is
NSFW.

~~~
leetcrew
imagine you happen to open this page at work while someone walks past your
desk. if they say "hey, are you looking at penises at work?" you have the
opportunity to explain "no, actually this is a representation of one of the
greatest works of western art". more often than not, they will just keep
walking and not ask for an explanation. do you really want to be the person
they remember this way?

some people just don't want to open a picture of a penis at work (or be
surprised by one at home), no matter how artistic. I don't find this
disturbing.

------
pacala
This is futile. The cat is out of the bag. There is no technological counter
to AI + ubiquitous sensor networks.

There are AI systems out there that can identify you by gait. Possibly already
in your phone, ostensibly to help detect if the phone is carried by someone
else. Straightforward to connect to the 24/7 video surveillance network that
is built all around us: ring, self-driving cars/drones that double as
corporate spies, video checkout, etc.

Furthermore, radars are coming to your phone in the near future:
[https://atap.google.com/soli](https://atap.google.com/soli). There is no way
to hide from such radars picking up everything that moves: your gait, your
breath, your heartbeat. Oh, and the gait, breath and heartbeat of anyone near
you, whether they agreed to the 500 pages EULA surrendering their privacy or
not.

~~~
kitotik
Hi fellow jaded cynic!

I can’t disagree with anything in your post, but I would add that there always
opportunities to be a pain in the ass.

Maybe not all systems can be toppled, but most can certainly be hacked,
abused, slowed down, obscured, damaged, re-purposed, stolen, rebooted, copied,
exposed, hidden, rendered obsolete, improved, deleted, etc.

I see your defeatism and raise you a giant middle finger!

~~~
bernardlunn
I agree. Messing with the system can be fun even if ultimately futile. Also
the fact that AI can sometimes be stupid can sometimes lead to good trading
opportunities.

------
yumraj
The license plate dress has the added benefit that buggy self driving cars may
actually notice the pedestrian wearing it.

~~~
BelleOfTheBall
Honestly, I'd wear that dress easily, even for regular outings, not just for
hiding from cameras. Those hoodies, though, maybe I'm an old fart but they're
a bit too "abstract". Sadly, those seem like the most effective option right
now. I read the Adversarial Patch article [0] and it pretty much demonstrated
similar patterns.

Trouble is, if these get widespread enough - they won't look out of place
_but_ the moment they become widespread is the moment updates get pushed to
make them obsolete. It's an unescapable situation.

[0]: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.09665](https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.09665)

~~~
ph0rque
> Trouble is, if these get widespread enough - they won't look out of place
> but the moment they become widespread is the moment updates get pushed to
> make them obsolete. It's an unescapable situation.

Did you just say recurring revenue (for the clothing makers)?

------
mattkevan
Getting strong William Gibson/Zero History vibes from that article.

If you haven’t read the book (written over a decade ago), a major plot point
revolves around a T-shirt that renders the wearer invisible to CCTV cameras.

~~~
bawolff
That was the first thing i thought of too

------
notJim
I seriously hope this begins to become a fashion trend in the near future. I
don't see why one of the more out-there fashion designers wouldn't pick it up.

~~~
chipperyman573
As soon as it becomes mainstream models will be trained for it.

~~~
turblety
Na, just make it illegal. Governments are increasingly eroding people's
freedoms. Let's remove another one, and force everyone to wear approved and
regulated clothing. You know, for your own safety.

------
emptybits
Related thought, on hiding from cameras and overzealous public identification
systems...

Most western nations are now, temporarily, accepting face coverings as daily
attire in the age of COVID-19. Plenty of asian and muslim nations did
previously, for cultural and health reasons.

Culturally acceptable anonymity, courtesy of the pandemic. Maybe this isn't
temporary if the fear of future viral spreads takes root in culture.

~~~
NikolaNovak
neat if it worked, but article specifically calls out that Chinese (and other)
systems have been trained on medical-masked datasets :-/

~~~
emptybits
Yes, several Chinese companies claim to do reliable identification of masked
faces.[1] I find that pretty amazing but time will tell.

[1] [https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/03/10/masks-wont-make-
you...](https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/03/10/masks-wont-make-you-safe-
from-facial-recognition/)

------
consultutah
The thing is, they won’t work forever or even for very long. Even makeup will
eventually be thwarted.

~~~
falcolas
CV dazzle has been around for at least 7 years; an eternity in this era of CV
growth. It still works. What makes you believe it will be thwarted?

~~~
freedomben
I'm certainly no expert in CV, but having worked in government/law enforcement
tech previously (pre-Snowden days) I have full confidence that if people
started actually using CV Dazzle to evade detection, they would work on
breaking through it. Generally speaking those systems only receive features
that are actually problems the users are facing. Once they identify the
problem they can throw nearly unlimited amounts of money at it, and they will
win.

This is why I'm focusing my efforts on political solutions to protect our
privacy, rather than technical solutions. That's not to say I don't think
technical solutions are important, because they absolutely are, but even
things like encryption could be made illegal politically if they want to. Thus
politics is the most important arena for privacy advocates IMHO.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
The argument that we need political solutions originally came from a time when
technology people weren't paying attention to politics at all, and of course
then you get this:

[https://xkcd.com/538/](https://xkcd.com/538/)

But it feels like it has gone the other way now, to the point that people
dismiss potentially helpful technical solutions because "what really matters
is politics" even though in reality you need both.

If the government bans privacy technologies then it's hard to use them, but if
nobody develops or uses them to begin with then you don't have them either.

And for some people the government in question isn't ours, it's a foreign
authoritarian government where "policy solutions" are just not going to happen
and the only option available is technology. It's a lot easier to _develop_
that technology in less authoritarian countries, which means we have a
responsibility to do it, because if they have to do it the cost of a mistake
is a lot higher.

~~~
freedomben
Agree with you completely. If I take my previous statement further to "don't
even bother holing up as insurgents because the government will win the
battle" then it goes to a place I don't agree with (I think there's plenty of
evidence that the "little guy" can win against big governments. Afghanistan is
a great example).

So I really should re-phrase my position to clarify that I meant _in the
United States_ , but also even in the US I do think the technological
solutions are important and should be developed. The important point I want to
stress is that I don't think we should ever disregard the political war
because of technological confidence in our ability to thwart the
authoritarians. Both politics and technology are both critical pieces. If we
lose on either front, we lose.

------
ph0rque
"Is that you hiding from the cameras, or are you just wearing an ugly shirt?"

~~~
heeen2
“What’s that?” she asked. “The ugliest T-shirt in the world,” he said, and
kissed her cheek. “The Bollards will be disappointed,” she said, coming in and
closing the door. “I thought they’d had me sleeping in that.” “So ugly that
digital cameras forget they’ve seen it.” “Cameras can see it. The surveillance
cameras can all see it, but then they forget they’ve seen it.” “Why?” “Because
their architecture tells them to forget it, and anyone who’s wearing it as
well. They forget the figure wearing the ugly T-shirt. Forget the head atop
it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure. That which the
camera sees, bearing the sigil, it deletes from the recalled image. Though
only if you ask it to show you the image. So there’s no suspicious busy-ness
to be noticed. If you ask for June 7, camera 53, it retrieves what it saw. In
the act of retrieval, the sigil, and the human form bearing it, cease to be
represented. By virtue of deep architecture. Gentlemen’s agreement."

William Gibson, Zero History (2010)

~~~
jmaa
That sounds more realistic than one might expect. Most printers will
apparently reject printing of patterns containing the EURion pattern [1],
commonly found on paper cash. Not a far stretch that some facial recognition
tech might contain deliberate hidden patterns in the future.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation)

------
ufmace
Obviously this is going to turn into one of those back-and-forth wars of more
effective adversarial clothing designs versus improved detection algorithms.
What I really wonder is, which one comes out on top in the end, or at least
most of the time? Will designs and/or fashions get weird and effective enough
that it just isn't practical to recognize people in general in public with
computerized algorithms? Or will the algorithms win, with these being 95%
ineffective and also resulting in drastically more attention from ordinary
people and any human authorities who happen to be watching?

------
Noos
One of the more memorable stories I read as a child was "A Bowl of Biskies
Makes a Growing Boy" by Raymond F. Jones. In it, the intelligent, scientific
teen with an aptitude for chemistry discovers the government is lacing
breakfast cereals with drugs to quell the populace.

The boy discovers it, weans himself off the drug, and then eats mostly from
the health food store to avoid it. But the government uses that store to round
up anyone who discovers the truth, because it's a sign plain as day you have.

Stuff like this makes me think of that story. If anything, a motivated
government could just train policeman on what patterns or clothing break
camera recognition and stop people based on it. Or if you have an obscured
plate, they don't need the camera if it's the law not to have it.

This really only works if we have pervasive but more or less harmless
surveillance by benign or robotic actors. But this is kind of like that health
food store in that all the technical solutions in the world can't stop a
motivated agent. You have to eat somewhere, and you have to exist in more than
just image recognition databases.

------
anigbrowl
I like the license plate dress featured in the article. A simpler point to
bear in mind that even after the immediate pandemic emergency is over many
people will need to continue to wear a mask in public. Doing errands/outdoor
exercise/volunteer work in public while masked is an enjoyable increase of
freedom and privacy.

------
mirimir
Privacy in meatspace is dead. Totally dead. Hopeless. Never coming back,
unless technological society crashes.

Privacy online is all that remains. In meatspace, I strive only to be
unremarkable. In my case, just a tired old man. Nothing to see here.

My cover story, I suppose, is using a VPN service to hide my porn addiction.

Edit: I recommend Vinge's _True Names_.

------
pedalpete
I was hoping for something that thwarted the processing in the CCD (chip that
captures light in digital cameras AFAIK) instead of something that just
thwarts the recognition algorithms.

Of course, if the camera still captures a perfect image, that image or video
is always around to be processed at a later date.

~~~
starky
CCD cameras haven't been the preferred camera sensor for more than a decade at
this point. The entire industry moved to CMOS a long time ago. You might find
CCDs in use today in specific scenarios like where you need global shutters,
but even then, you can buy CMOS sensors with global shutters that outperform
those CCDs.

~~~
pedalpete
Of course, completely blanked on that. Haven't been looking at that tech in
quite a while. Thanks for the correction.

------
ColanR
Tangential topic.

Are masks of the type worn to protect against covid-19 effective against being
identified on camera? Because this seems like an amazing excuse (in terms of a
silver lining on a very dark cloud) for facemasks as 'anonymity wear' to
become mainstream.

~~~
markhall
Yes/No. Here, probably. Elsewhere, no. In China, their facial recognition has
got so good that they can track people even with face masks on:
[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/how-china-
built-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/how-china-built-facial-
recognition-for-people-wearing-masks/)

~~~
aledalgrande
Also if you add gait recognition, you can add as many masks and hoodies as you
want, but you will not escape recognition.

~~~
FridgeSeal
Would wearing some kind of full length cloak or burqa-sequence garment that
obscures a lot of movement be a plausible counter? Obviously they can’t
obscure everything about your gait, but I imagine they’d take away enough
useful information to make it significantly harder.

~~~
aledalgrande
Probably, but at that point you'd stand out to humans! Imagine being at an
airport...

~~~
FridgeSeal
Standing out to humans is plausibly less of am issue than being monitored and
recorded and your data stored in perpetuity.

Humans will forget about you, data recorded about you will be stored an reused
and abused for who knows how long.

~~~
aledalgrande
Good point. I was thinking that in a case of an oppressive gov you wouldn't be
able to wear these things anyway.

------
hattar
Wouldn’t wearing something like this just make you much more of a target?
Maybe I don’t understand these things well, but it seems if I were trying to
track people I’d make the very small minority wearing something like this a
target group.

Another way of thinking about it, if I’m the only person in my community
wearing these weird patterns, aren’t I even more identifiable than I would be
otherwise?

~~~
leib
In China police are sent notifciations if undesireable people are seen on
camera in their jurisdictioin.

I imagine for those people the ability to move around undetected would be very
much worth the garish pattern.

I also question just whether the average policeman would be able to tell
whether clothing was designed to be untrackable

------
yellow_lead
Will anyone wear it while crossing the street with Tesla's on the road?

------
itronitron
Finally I have an excuse to wear my ugly Christmas sweaters all year long

------
tartoran
If I could pixelate my own skin on a whim I wouldn’t worry about the shirt.
Unconfortably I think eventually we’ll become fully traceable and privacy will
be a thing of the past.

------
noodlesUK
What about an incredibly bright set of IR lights? Surely that would cause most
cameras (at least IR ones) to massively overexpose. It might only work at
night though.

~~~
dylan604
To me, this is the best way to go. I've seen the hats with the UV LEDS
embedded in the brim, but why not around the collar of a shirt?. The only side
effect I see is UV light directly in the face. Not sure if the UV
wavelengths/intensity can be low enough to blind a camera to not cause odd tan
lines or worse?

~~~
blincoln
UV LEDs probably won't do much against cameras. You want NIR, around
700-800nm. Security cameras are generally sensitive to it, unlike UV.

~~~
dylan604
That's even better. IR won't cause skin cancer.

Either way, blinding the camera with lights that are invisible to other people
unlike these outfits would be much more effective. You can still be subversive
without advertising it to anyone. If you're recruiting, then sure, where these
outfits. If you actually want to not be seen by the cameras, make the cameras
unable to see.

------
dylan604
The second image in the article looks like the result of some machine learning
output. Something like the result of the Deep Dreaming app.

------
yandrypozo
Sorry I couldn't read the article, could someone post where to buy those
shirts, I'll use them for sure.

~~~
currymj
[https://www.rageon.com/a/users/invisibilitycloak](https://www.rageon.com/a/users/invisibilitycloak)

if you read the article you'd see that they only work sometimes though.

------
davidw
I could see this being a sub plot in a modern day Seinfeld.

Kramer buys one - or sells them? Things go sideways.

------
jerrysievert
amusingly I've seen a couple of people out recently wearing anti-cv masks. I
guess you wear what you've already purchased, but it's most interesting that
I've seen more than one.

------
mikece
I’ll buy five!!

------
aaron695
Wear a f __king mask.

The claim Hanwang's software works is dubious at best. And they also admit
with sunglasses it totally fails.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-
facial...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-facial-
recognition/even-mask-wearers-can-be-idd-china-facial-recognition-firm-says-
idUSKBN20W0WL)

------
holidayacct
It's pointless, here is why:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/fyrqi2/til_that...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/fyrqi2/til_that_there_are_long_distance_piezoelectric/)

