The same sort of algorithms that use your face to unlock your phone are being used by cops to recognize you in traffic stops and immigration raids. Cops have access to tools that have scraped billions of images from the web, letting them identify essentially anyone by pointing a phone camera at them. Being aware of all the ways your face is being recognized by algorithms and sometimes collected by cameras when you walk outside can start to feel overwhelming at best, and futile to resist at worst.Â
But there are ways to disguise yourself from facial recognition systems in your everyday life, and it doesn’t require owning clothes with a special design, or high-tech anti-surveillance gear. Â
In the years since the Dazzle project made adversarial design mainstream, there have been lots of projects that attempt to confound, pollute, or elude the cameras that watch us move through the world every day. technologist Adam Harvey’s made several more, including heat obscuring ponchos meant to hide the wearer from drones, Faraday cage pockets for phones, and high-powered LED flash arrays for blinding paparazzi. But much of the wearables in this genre—from high-fashion streetwear shops to cheap listings by dropshippers—rely on 2D printed designs that don’t keep up with how quickly algorithms change and improve. The $600 hoodie with a cool pixel design on it might have worked yesterday, in perfect conditions, but the next time the cameras in the mall update their algorithms or datasets, it doesn’t work anymore.Â
All of this sounds complex and sophisticated, but these systems aren’t necessarily hard to fool. It turns out, you probably already own the most effective anti-surveillance fashion: a cloth mask.Â
It will probably make you stand out more, anything you do will probably generate a unique signature where you can be tracked anyway. Don’t stick out, blend in, you want to be a ghost, not a peacock.
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The same sort of algorithms that use your face to unlock your phone are being used by cops to recognize you in traffic stops and immigration raids. Cops have access to tools that have scraped billions of images from the web, letting them identify essentially anyone by pointing a phone camera at them. Being aware of all the ways your face is being recognized by algorithms and sometimes collected by cameras when you walk outside can start to feel overwhelming at best, and futile to resist at worst.Â
But there are ways to disguise yourself from facial recognition systems in your everyday life, and it doesn’t require owning clothes with a special design, or high-tech anti-surveillance gear. Â
In the years since the Dazzle project made adversarial design mainstream, there have been lots of projects that attempt to confound, pollute, or elude the cameras that watch us move through the world every day. technologist Adam Harvey’s made several more, including heat obscuring ponchos meant to hide the wearer from drones, Faraday cage pockets for phones, and high-powered LED flash arrays for blinding paparazzi. But much of the wearables in this genre—from high-fashion streetwear shops to cheap listings by dropshippers—rely on 2D printed designs that don’t keep up with how quickly algorithms change and improve. The $600 hoodie with a cool pixel design on it might have worked yesterday, in perfect conditions, but the next time the cameras in the mall update their algorithms or datasets, it doesn’t work anymore.Â
All of this sounds complex and sophisticated, but these systems aren’t necessarily hard to fool. It turns out, you probably already own the most effective anti-surveillance fashion: a cloth mask.Â
Read now: [https://www.404media.co/the-state-of-anti-surveillance-design/](https://www.404media.co/the-state-of-anti-surveillance-design/) ***An abridged version of this story appeared in 404 Media’s zine.***Â [***Get a copy here***](https://404media.myshopify.com/products/presale-ice-surveillance-zine?ref=404media.co)***.***
It will probably make you stand out more, anything you do will probably generate a unique signature where you can be tracked anyway. Don’t stick out, blend in, you want to be a ghost, not a peacock.