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

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

https://adversarialfashion.com/collections/bags/products/sta...

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.

[the8472]

The mostly black backpack makes me wonder if a vantablack-covered tarp poncho would work. Since you should just be a black, featureless blob to a camera there's not much for the NN to latch onto other than outline.

[kylek]

I wonder if the green traffic lights will make you more susceptible to getting creamed by a self-driving car.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Anti-ALPR patterns really should be using diplomatic plates from the axis of evil countries for extra fun.

[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...

[nsgi]

> Sadly, it's definitely much easier to push out a software update than it is to replace your clothing.

Depends on the release process.

[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. 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!

[yumraj]

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

[LeifCarrotson]

You might be able to take your car out for a walk if the adaptive cruise will latch onto and follow your shirt plate! It could be like having a leash-trained 3500 lbs steel dog - just hope it doesn't see any squirrels. Heel, Tesla!

[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

[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.

[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.

[JauntTrooper]

I wonder how accurate gait recognition technology will become.

[NikolaNovak]

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

[consultutah]

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

[currymj]

when they're generated digitally, it's surprisingly hard to get good robustness against adversarial examples, and people have been working on it for a while. of course you can train to stop any specific input, but then new ones can be created for the newly-trained network.

there are techniques that can prevent this, but you pay a real price in overall performance, which may or may not be worth it.

of course it's harder to make physical objects work, but if somebody did manage to make a method for physical adversarial attacks that worked reliably, I would guess you'd run into the same problems. it's not at all clear that the endgame is that we can easily stop these attacks.

[quickthrowman]

I remember seeing an article about how ICP “juggalo” makeup fools some facial recognition software, I wonder if that has been solved yet?

[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?

[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)

[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.

[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-...

[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

[dillonmckay]

Only to humans.

[jwilk]

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1105/

[vkreso]

It's called Streissand effect!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

[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.

[starky]

You are correct that it would only work at night since a majority of cameras out there have IR Cut Filters for daylight colour accuracy.

Not to mention the safety risks of strapping IR LEDs that are that bright at other people's eye level.

[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?

[Igelau]

The cameras won't recognize you when you literally catch on fire.

[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.