[HN Gopher] The Camera-Shy Hoodie
___________________________________________________________________
The Camera-Shy Hoodie
Author : alwaysbeconsing
Score : 450 points
Date : 2023-02-27 16:16 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.macpierce.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.macpierce.com)
| qwertox wrote:
| I wonder if such strong IR light is capable of harming the eye,
| even if we're unable to see it.
|
| High power LEDs in the visible spectrum are terribly bright, and
| when I accidentally get them shined into the eye, it really feels
| concerning if any harm has been done.
| fitzroy wrote:
| Aren't traditional (non-LED) lightbulbs that get hot much
| higher in the IR spectrum since they're dissipating most of
| their energy as heat?
| Zak wrote:
| Bright visible light causes the pupil to constrict and
| triggers an instinct to squint, blink, or look away. IR alone
| does not.
| snerbles wrote:
| Near-IR aiming lasers (such as the AN/PEQ-2 and AN/PAQ-4) can
| indeed cause permanent damage, among USAF CATM armorers there
| was a rumor of at least one idiot burning his retina trying to
| "see" the beam directly.
| spcebar wrote:
| "Why do my eyes feel spicy?"
| barelyauser wrote:
| We can stare at a burning campfire and barely get damaged. Long
| term exposure is another thing. The emitter power would have to
| be insanely high, or some kind of laser.
| drdaeman wrote:
| Yes, but a campfire emits a lot of visible light, so our eyes
| adjust accordingly. While we're not cats with their amazing
| pupil dilation, we have some too. If one wears an IR-shiny
| hood, they may be at higher risk in the low-light conditions,
| if their eyes adjust to the dark, brain not realizing they're
| flooded with IR.
| barelyauser wrote:
| Retinal damage is not the only kind of damage the eye can
| be subjected to. The cornea has no blood flow to cool
| itself and is fully exposed to incoming radiation.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Good question, this guy seems to have studied this question:
|
| https://medium.com/@alex.kilpatrick/ir-illumination-and-eye-...
|
| He concludes:
|
| _" If you buy the largest IR floodlight available on Amazon
| and you stare at it 200 mm (~7") from your face for more than
| 1000 seconds (~ 16 minutes) there is a possibility you might
| damage your cornea. So don't do that. And I doubt anyone would
| do that because these things get pretty hot at that distance."_
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| realworldperson wrote:
| [dead]
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Does this only work at night?
|
| During daytime, I assume cameras use visible ambient light
| (that's at least how my baby monitor works fwiw :-). And of
| course any regular camera e.g. Dslr I assume wouldn't care much?
| pluc wrote:
| There's a bunch more adversarial fashion over at...
| adversarialfashion.com
|
| https://adversarialfashion.com/
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I'm surprised nobody is producing swag with the EURion
| constellation[0] on it. You'd be surprised how many random
| image processing libraries it breaks.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation
| myself248 wrote:
| I've been wondering this for years too. Does it work if it's
| slightly distorted, as on a garment, or not viewed face-on?
|
| I guess it's time to haul out the t-shirt press...
| popcalc wrote:
| https://output.jsbin.com/nikoxod/26/
|
| Just need to head over to redbubble now.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Also see: https://www.reflectacles.com/
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Just don't leave any reviews or buy it with your own credit
| card, otherwise your _unique_ and cool cyberpunk fashion will
| lead right back to you:
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/bv8j8w/a-tattoo-and-an-etsy-...
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Also, don't burn cop cars if you can avoid it.
| selectodude wrote:
| Or be a foreigner here using an ESTA. Generally committing
| crimes _after_ giving the government every little piece of
| information about you is a bad idea.
| dylan604 wrote:
| These seem much less functional and more of a fashion
| statement. Defeating ALPR readers when you're not a car seems
| bizarre. Where the OP is actually actively protecting one's
| identity from being followed.
|
| So even though the name says adversarial, how is it actually
| being adversarial?
| blobbers wrote:
| Great, so now when the cops get aggressive with you there will be
| an IR LED blurring any evidence you might have had? >_>
|
| It's 2023 pandemic if you want to be anonymous wear a mask.
| moremetadata wrote:
| IF you submit a UK GDPR DSAR or equivalent in your own country,
| the cops will deliberately not hand over the data, including
| Axiom bodycam footage, under the pretence its all used for law
| enforcement purposes, which the legislation lets them do. I
| know, I've tried. I've even been told its up to the individual
| officer whether they want to submit their bodycam footage,
| which is a great way for the police to cover up crimes,
| considering they already have the option to switch on the
| recording, and these bodycams have a 30sec buffer which gets
| included when they enable recording. Police cars also have
| built in AV recording to monitor what goes on inside a police
| car.
|
| You would be amazed at how criminal the Police in the UK really
| are, they do a good job of PR on social media and the press
| doing them favours to get leads on stories.
|
| You are better off having your own stealth AV devices recording
| your every move and sound 24/7, built into jewellery, head
| torches, clothing, dash cams for vehicles, and smart phones
| recording all the time, so you dont even have to bother taking
| a photo or video, just point and record. And where possible
| have it streamed live back to your servers with a dead man's
| switch.
|
| Its the only way to combat the intelligent entity's who seek to
| dominate.
|
| You are living through a technological arms race.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| > You are better off having your own stealth AV devices
| recording your every move and sound 24/7,
|
| Not when owning a stealth A/V device is a criminal offense
| moremetadata wrote:
| Since when? Links to the legislation?
|
| In the meantime, I'll carrying on breaking the law to carry
| on protecting myself, building up my portfolio of
| criminals!
| LegitShady wrote:
| sure, but this hoodie works as effectively as the wyze
| cameras that make my own surveillance around my home.
| moremetadata wrote:
| > the wyze cameras that make my own surveillance around my
| home
|
| They are too obvious, if you have a brick property, put a
| few bee/insect bricks at different heights into the walls
| and then drill through from the inside of the property and
| put a slim line camera like the AXIS P12 Modular Camera
| Series in one of the larger bee/insect holes. Doesnt matter
| then if the individual has their face facing the ground,
| which is lot of the time, you'll still get a good image of
| their face.
|
| You can find even cheaper cam's if you search
| aliexpress.com.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Hah, I had a different thought: How long until every Ring/Nest
| doorbell video looks like this?
|
| It does seem to only work against IR cameras though -
| presumably brightly lit scenes won't struggle.
| ShuffleBoard wrote:
| Obligatory Key & Peele prior art reference:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztRSm_SJP58
| patja wrote:
| Also was a key plot device in Luther season 5
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| There's always a relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1105/
| gfd wrote:
| I remember my old android phone would pick up IR as a purpleish
| color: https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-
| qimg-d8d68a82c1ec4b4975b8e...
|
| I wonder if it's possible to make it bright enough to blind
| regular (non IR filtered) cameras too?
| SnooSux wrote:
| I work with IR sensors at work and modern smartphones pick up
| NIR frequencies as well. It's picked up by the red channel so
| combining that with the blue is probably what's making the
| purple color.
|
| My guess would be that something bright enough to wash out the
| red channel would still leave the blue and green intact. So
| there should be enough information that the image is degraded
| but not necessarily blinded.
|
| But I could be wrong, depending on how independently the color
| sensors and processing work.
| tjkrusinski wrote:
| No, older smart phone cameras lacked IR filters because the IR
| filter didn't only block IR light, but also a distribution of
| wavelengths around IR. Filtering out IR means many of the
| visible light wavelengths are attenuated as well, decreasing
| the amount of light arriving at the sensor.
|
| With better noise reduction algorithms, more sensitive sensors
| and lower noise sensors, IR filters are now almost always used
| in smart phone cameras.
| jandrese wrote:
| Also, without an IR filter those cameras could partially see
| through light clothing in bright conditions. This of course
| formed a creepy online community and enough backlash that the
| manufacturers decided to include IR filters for all future
| products.
| major505 wrote:
| There's a scene in Baby Driver where they go rob a mail agency,
| and use google with IR leds to confuse the local cameras.
| 10g1k wrote:
| Or buy a $0.95 mask.
| fortran77 wrote:
| > As the hoodie uses IR light, it's effects are imperceptible by
| human eyes when activated, only effecting IR sensitive equipment
|
| Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it can't hurt you. If
| it's it's not directed away from your eyes, a bright IR light an
| inch away from your eye can cause harm.
|
| https://ehs.lbl.gov/resource/documents/radiation-protection/...
| AbusiveHNAdmin wrote:
| [dead]
| interweb wrote:
| See also Becca Ricks https://beccaricks.space/Unidentified-Halo
| fsckboy wrote:
| Freud taught us an enduring lesson, pay attention to to the words
| we use, they tell us what we are thinking.
|
| > _Hoodie is a DIY adversarial garment_
|
| who wants to wear an adversarial garment? adversarial people.
|
| man, life is so much better when you don't approach it
| adversarially. most people are happy to see your face, and you
| can see it on theirs.
| noirbot wrote:
| How many people who are happy to see your face are watching you
| on surveillance cameras? It's not like this hides your face
| from a human, and you can always put the hood down if you're at
| your friend's house or somewhere else you trust.
| fsckboy wrote:
| you can't skulk through a crowd worrying about surveillance
| cameras without... worrying. I'm saying that selecting the
| word adversarial to describe this garment is not a
| coincidence, it's an attitude, and I'm linking it to the
| emotional life of people who would be interested in the
| garment.
|
| worrying is stressful anxiety that your friends (who can see
| your face) can't completely erase for you. adversarial
| essentially means "looking for anxiety". I'm saying step
| back, it's not the only way to live.
|
| downvoting btw is also adversarial so have at it, you'll feel
| better... not :)
| noirbot wrote:
| Or it's something people enjoy as a thought experiment? I
| work adjacent to computer security industries and have
| always found the sort of cat-and-mouse of circumventing
| various detection and security mechanisms to be engaging
| and interesting.
|
| There's certainly people who are doing it out of anxiety,
| either intentionally or because of their own history or
| mental issues. For them, it may not be easy or possible to
| just decide to live another way. Either there actually is
| something they need to be adversarial towards or they're
| well aware that it's not necessarily rational, but it's not
| any easier for them to stop than it is for a depressed
| person to "just be happy".
| LoganDark wrote:
| > downvoting btw is also adversarial so have at it, you'll
| feel better... not :)
|
| lmao?
| jehb wrote:
| > who wants to wear an adversarial garment? adversarial people.
|
| I disagree.
|
| Who wants to wear an adversarial garment? People stuck caught
| under the spying eyes of adversarial governments and
| adversarial surveillance capitalism companies.
| 98codes wrote:
| The strobing seems to defeat the effect -- you only need one good
| frame with a face showing to defeat the hoodie, and this seemed
| slow enough that I could pick up the face of the demo guy with my
| own eyes in realtime.
| jwong_ wrote:
| Seems like the strobing is intended to defeat the autoexposure
| compensation. Otherwise the camera might see the brightlight
| and reduce exposure to compensate. Concentrating the lighting
| on the face only and staying far away from cameras might help
| that without requiring the strobe.
| wstuartcl wrote:
| The leds are placed on the chest -- seems like a miss to not
| place them also around the hoodie near the face. I would
| suspect even without strobing the over saturation would work
| should those leds be surrounding the face.
|
| All of that said, wearing something like this out (unless it
| becomes super commonplace lol) just screams watch me closely
| (and easily follow me back to some known origin).
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The leds are placed on the chest -- seems like a miss to
| not place them also around the hoodie near the face.
|
| Based on the documentation, all that would probably do is
| allow the effect to work at slightly closer distances.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The leds are placed on the chest -- seems like a miss to
| not place them also around the hoodie near the face.
|
| Based on the documentation, all that would probably do is
| allow the effect to work at slightly closer distances:
|
| > In addition, the LEDs need to be a minimum distance from
| the camera to be effective, as the cone of light from them
| needs to be wide enough to overlap with the cameras view of
| the wearers head. In practice, this is about 12ft (~3m).
|
| Putting them on the chest would help with ergonomics. It
| would work even if you have the hood off and the LEDs would
| be more consistently positioned.
| bsenftner wrote:
| FR developer here: that strobing is very smart, as the
| mechanical mechanism starts to adjust the strobe generates
| another adjustment. If the strobing is at a random interval,
| it becomes difficult to impossible to compensate in software.
| FR does not work without face images.
| amelius wrote:
| All the camera would have to do is ignore the brightest
| parts of the image, then correct the ExposureTime based on
| that image.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I would think randomizing the strobing would be effective
| as well. All of this defeating of auto exposure adjustments
| makes me think back to the days of Macrovision and how
| easily it could be defeated as it was not randomized at
| all. Then again, it was also easily just stripped out of
| the signal.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| With random timing, you're more likely to get one period
| that's long enough for the auto-exposure to correct it
| and see the face. Autoexposure takes time because it has
| to use a feedback loop to search for the correct
| exposure, so if the brightness changes fast enough, it
| can't keep up.
| dylan604 wrote:
| you set a maximum on period so that doesn't happen. if
| you develop something with a known pattern, that can be
| programed in to be countered. hence my example of
| Macrovision. randomizing the values means it is much
| harder to counter.
| nkozyra wrote:
| That's what they say, but how much autofocusing is actually
| happening? In the example video the scene is mostly in focus.
| My guess is it actually messes with the exposure rather than
| focus.
| anonu wrote:
| Agreed that was not a good demo. I assumed that segment was not
| taken with a cheap webcam/security camera - which is why the
| auto-exposure worked a lot faster.
|
| At a greater distance with lower MP security cameras, this
| thing might still work.
| mc32 wrote:
| Wouldn't IR filters defeat this once it becomes an issue? You can
| just glue them on the front of the lens or it can be on the
| sensor though the latter requires a new sensor.
| qwertox wrote:
| They probably would, but in this case it's the camera's IR
| lights which enable the capability to see at night.
| AntonyGarand wrote:
| Cameras frequently use IR as a night vision light frequency, so
| adding an IR filter also disables night vision assuming they
| use this frequency.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Is having this much IR light right by your face dangerous?
| frankus wrote:
| If the camera has its own co-located IR source, you can just use
| a normal retro-reflective hoodie like this one
| https://www.amazon.com/TR-Super-Bright-Reflective-Jacket/dp/...
| (also great for walking/biking at night).
|
| In a dark area it completely obscures your face
| (https://twitter.com/frankus/status/1499257277894705155), and you
| have plausible deniability in terms of wearing it specifically
| for defeating cameras.
| chrononaut wrote:
| Wow, for a minute I thought someone did a low effort
| superimposition of a logo of the jacket or something into the
| image. Took me a moment to work out that scene.
| dmix wrote:
| > It's nice and subdued in a sort of futuristic way until you
| shine a light on it, at which point it's almost painfully
| reflective.
|
| Is there any downside to these? Such as distracting cars or
| blinding other cyclists?
| natebc wrote:
| The reflections from these jackets are not dazzling so much
| as ... broad spectrum? Basically they just look like a bright
| white sheet. Very hard to miss, hopefully.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Isn't that the point?
|
| To distract cars - to draw attention to you - so they don't
| not see you riding / running / walking on the side of the
| road and run you over?
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| Drivers may develop target fixation and inadvertently steer
| towards something they want to avoid. It's thought to be
| one of the reasons that so many cars manage to nail light
| poles and trees dead-center.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| When they've already lost most control and are panicking,
| yes. But it's completely normal for cyclists to wear
| reflective clothing to make themselves visible. Even cars
| have retroflectors on their taillights for this purpose.
| No road user is trying to hide in the dark in the hopes
| that drivers won't get fixated on them!
| xoa wrote:
| > _Is there any downside to these? Such as distracting cars
| or blinding other cyclists?_
|
| One speculative possible downside: others have answered the
| human aspect, but in the context of security/privacy OP is
| being perhaps a little blase with "plausible deniability", or
| at least it may vary by region? I can see why such a jacket
| could be useful and why a cyclist or jogger or the like would
| wear one, same as other visibility enhancing gear. But at the
| same time I've never ever seen such a thing anywhere in our
| state. And on camera it apparently looks like a neon sign.
| Sure, that obscures your face, but at the same time it will
| instantly draw the attention of any human security watching
| or potentially of AI if it's been tasked to look for such
| outliers. If it caught on and a quarter or half or whatever
| people were wearing such things at night then that wouldn't
| matter again, but anything that makes one "unique" in a
| crowd, regardless of what it is, represents signal. If
| someone is the only one (or one of only a couple) wearing
| something like that then even without their face they could
| still be tracked uniquely just by that. And with advances in
| later generation biometrics like gait analysis wearing such a
| thing might not only fail to stop individualized
| identification, but also leak information in terms of "this
| person is trying to hide their identity" which might
| correlate to groups in ways hard to predict.
|
| Of course again, that could be taken as an argument to try to
| make all this sort of thing more of a trend, but there is a
| first-mover calculation to make maybe depending on what
| someone is trying to accomplish. If one just wants to help
| hide others or mess around with camera tracking for the fun
| of it though that'd be no problem. It's the same kind of
| dilemma as all sorts of other "blend with the crowd" stuff,
| like Tor say. If everyone ran an onion router (ignoring
| current gen scaling issues) then there'd be zero signal from
| doing so, the protection offered would be strongest, and also
| the vast majority of traffic would be completely boring and
| legitimate because so would almost all the users. It'd be
| much harder to crack down on as well. If only a few people
| run it and specifically do so to conduct covert activity,
| well the mere act of doing so then potentially leaks a bit.
| And both sides are subject to reinforcing effects, if
| "everyone does it" and "it's normal" and "almost entirely
| legit" then that makes it easy for anyone new to join,
| constantly reinforcing the network. Conversely if it's
| something strange with whiffs of criminality, then many won't
| which in turn reinforces it being strange and those using it
| maybe having something suspicious going on. Bootstrapping
| that can be a tough nut.
|
| Anyway just sort of thinking out loud so to speak. For
| cameras I'm leaning towards ultimately some sort of legal
| response being needed, and that individuals trying to evade
| it is probably a losing battle.
| NotACop182 wrote:
| My guess Tesla will run you over. No for real what effects
| will this have on automated systems
| technofiend wrote:
| The idea of a Tesla self-driving system getting target
| fixation and driving towards the thing it should avoid is
| hilarious to me. And it also makes me wonder how likely
| that is to actually happen. Is the model weight of "shiny,
| bright reflective thing in IR spectrum" for "probably a
| road reflector, avoid" higher than "probably some water in
| the road, so that must be where the road is"? (Obviously
| totally made up examples).
| cj wrote:
| > target fixation and driving towards the thing it should
| avoid is hilarious to me. And it also makes me wonder how
| likely that is to actually happen
|
| Not sure why this is hilarious to you.
|
| Teslas have literally driven straight into tractor
| trailers sitting in a parking lot, killing the
| passengers.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/tesla-crash-nhtsa-feds-
| prob...
|
| This tech is over hyped and shouldn't be trusted.
| Definitely not hilarious to the victims.
| frankus wrote:
| Just doing the physics in my head, I think it's slightly less
| bright than the light source shining on it viewed from the
| same distance.
|
| So probably no more distracting to the person with the light
| than the light is to the person wearing the hoodie.
|
| In any case it's a similar material as road signs that are a
| similar size.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > In any case it's a similar material as road signs that
| are a similar size.
|
| Exactly. If anything, for this scenario, it would increase
| your visibility in a good way!
| petters wrote:
| Significantly less bright.
| Fricken wrote:
| Off camera it's just a generic, anonymous hoody, but on camera it
| is readily identified as the unique and unmistakeable camera shy
| hoody!
| ct0 wrote:
| It really just needs to be a necklace.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I was thinking of something more like ... uh ... a crown of
| thorns.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Imagine you are working for a three letter agency scanning a
| crowd.
|
| 999/1000 people look similar. One is just a glowing sun of
| light.
|
| Which one do you go take to the backroom?
| knodi123 wrote:
| so it hurts if the opposition is live-scanning a crowd, and
| it helps in all other cases, including targeted advertising /
| facial recognition stuff.
| colinsane wrote:
| you don't have to commit a crime to wear this. you can wear
| it as a statement, in which case attracting that kind of
| attention so that you can say -- ideally to someone with
| authority -- "i don't think it's right to surveil the public
| like this" is arguably some measure of success.
| zht wrote:
| until you get put on a list and you get SSSSed every time
| you fly
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Given that the cops have never needed much of a reason to
| illegally beat people up, I admire anyone who cares about
| making that statement so much that they're willing to risk
| it.
| cultureswitch wrote:
| Indeed, this is only really useful if the cameras aren't
| actively being monitored. If you're the odd one out wearing
| this at a protest, you might be specifically targeted.
| danjoredd wrote:
| Thats assuming they can figure out which one is wearing the
| hoodie. With enough evidence I can see them going for a guy
| with that, but they would have to not only make the
| decision to specifically target you, but to figure out
| which one of the hoodies moving around is causing the issue
| KMnO4 wrote:
| If this is the USA, then I'm guessing you would take the
| minority?
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| The shiny decoy.
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| The point of this webpage is that more people should be
| wearing it.
| dymk wrote:
| They won't, and so it's not very useful
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Protest organizers should hand out these hoodies, or
| someone should sell them to protestors through some kind of
| pop-up shop ambassador program where an affiliate at each
| protest sells the apparel on consignment.
| ilyt wrote:
| Only really work at night tho.
| justinator wrote:
| IR Cameras are used in daytime, too.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > IR Cameras are used in daytime, too.
|
| The documentation lists its limitations, which include
| daylight:
|
| > The Camera Shy Hoodie is not an end-all-be-all for
| hiding your identity. It's good for one thing, blowing
| out the view of night vision (IR) cameras in low light
| environments. It's not effective in sunlight, most indoor
| lighting, or against conventional cameras. In fact, you
| will draw attention to yourself if you wear this in a
| context in which the security cameras are actively
| monitored. In the view of an IR camera, it'll look as if
| you're flashing a light directly at the lens. In
| addition, the LEDs need to be a minimum distance from the
| camera to be effective, as the cone of light from them
| needs to be wide enough to overlap with the cameras view
| of the wearers head. In practice, this is about 12ft
| (~3m).
|
| The idea is designed to exploit limitations with the
| camera's auto-exposure, and I presume a requirement to do
| that is to strobe a light that outshines the ambient
| light by n times. That works at night because there's so
| little ambient light, during the day you'd have to
| outshine the sun (and the sun is _really_ bright).
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Protest organizers should hand out these hoodies, or
| someone should sell them to protestors...
|
| In that particular case, it wold make _far_ more sense to
| hand out a cost-reduced version that people could wear
| over their own clothes.
|
| I'm thinking of something with the LEDs mounted in a
| plastic ring like these
| (https://www.glowuniverse.com/20-inch-glow-stick-
| necklaces-8-...), with a battery box/controller, and
| maybe some kind of protest messaged taped to it.
| moremetadata wrote:
| Some people bring their own masks [1] which work 24/7 in
| all conditions!
|
| For protests, the best form of flattery is to be
| imitated, so this website [2] and others, lets you pay
| your respects and flatter the police.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_mask
|
| [2] https://havengear.com/
| EntrePrescott wrote:
| Depending on where you live, wearing a mask (as in: face
| covering, not the COVID masks) at a public protest or
| demonstration can be a punishable offense forbidden by
| law... and I'm not talking about autocratic states but
| many civilized and relatively liberal Western countries,
| cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-mask_law
| Foxo wrote:
| It is honestly just a terrible idea - you are essentially
| placing a target on yourself, no matter how you use it.
| Simply scanning a crowd of people with a camera, you are
| identifying people protesting from other civilians, in
| real-time and no cost. If you watched a crowd from above,
| over time you could find all sorts of patterns. In some
| countries, that could mean your whole family disappears.
|
| The only groups I see benefitting from this are the
| agents of oppressive regimes, and the meth heads breaking
| into your storage shed at night and stealing your bike.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| FYI check your local laws, this is almost certainly
| criminal in at least some places (e.g. in Germany it's
| illegal to "wear things which may prevent or interfere
| with identification of protestors" and to "carry items
| meant to interfere with identification", this clearly
| meets those criteria).
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Be realistic, 'everyone should wear this to provide cover
| to people in stealth mode' is not a sensible security plan
| outside of an extremely limited number of contexts. I hate
| security camera theater and panopticons most than most
| people, and I have exactly zero expectation of this
| becoming A Thing.
| [deleted]
| hammock wrote:
| The three letter agencies (and Walmart, and anyone who can
| pay for it) have gait analysis that IDs you by how you walk,
| no face needed
| MengerSponge wrote:
| That's why you put a pebble in your shoe. Then after enough
| years you take it out like Piccolo dropping his weighted
| clothes and, like Harrison Bergeron in the story, defy the
| authoritarian state with dance.
| yborg wrote:
| This wouldn't work on Keyzer Soze.
| buggythebug wrote:
| hated that movie
| PufPufPuf wrote:
| Why do we get all the bad stuff from Little Brother, but
| not the free Xboxes???
| e28eta wrote:
| Because Cory Doctorow is paying attention!
| macrolocal wrote:
| Counter-surveillance techniques for gait analysis are
| already well understood.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNeeovY4qNU
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| If you walk without rhythm you won't attract the worm?
| kapitanjakc wrote:
| Bless the Maker and His water. Bless the coming and going
| of Him. May His passage cleanse the world. May He keep
| the world for His people.
| brk wrote:
| No. Gait analysis is not really a commercialized thing.
| hammock wrote:
| https://www.tiktok.com/@tht.slowsubi/video/71990864681349
| 153...
| brk wrote:
| That is not gait detection, it's basic object detection
| video analytics.
| e12e wrote:
| Granted vr telemetry is based off of multiple cameras
| tracking a single individual - still, one wonders how
| hard it would be to cover a crowd with specific aim of
| identification and tracking?
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/18/vr_telemetry_ident
| ity...
| brk wrote:
| For all practical purposes, it is impossible in the
| current state of security/surveillance video footage.
|
| The example described in the paper in your link is using
| cameras that are setup to provide very high resolution
| images of people. It would be like using full-frame
| portrait images for face recognition, and then expecting
| that to translate to real-world scenarios where you might
| only have 20 pixels on a face, and the person is off-axis
| to the camera.
|
| Gait detection has been discussed for a while, and may
| definitely be a thing one day, but right now we are
| barely at the point where pose _estimation_ is a thing in
| security video. Very far from being able to do high
| precision pose recognition and sampling over successive
| frames to model something that would qualify as "gait".
| cryptonector wrote:
| The decoy.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Yea, buying a generic baseball cap is way more effective.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Honestly, using this same technique in a baseball cap would
| probably work wonders.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| This creates an anomaly on any surveillance to the point
| you will get exact time / date and you will be able to get
| people that can be asked what you look like.
| prpl wrote:
| Obscurity through pronouncement
| samstave wrote:
| Ive often wondered if shirts with Epaulets equipped with LED IR
| lights might provide a shroud - or a jacket /hat/helmet with an
| IR array would always be a good thing.
|
| Imagine Epaletts-like-strips of IR/UV LEDs connecting with
| magnets to any garment.
|
| Or low cost strips of IR LEDs glued to some neodymian magnets
| which are attachable to camera shrouds.
|
| Else - Epoxy filled paint-ball rounds to be shot at cameras to
| obscure view, or fast-dry epoxy rounds for shooting at
| drones/kill-bot joints.
|
| If you havea BostonDynamics B.I.T.C.H. (Battle Intelligent
| Tactical Canine Hunter) after you - shoot its joints with epoxy
| that freezes its legs/joints/sensors)
|
| EDIT: - This is what every Major, Col, Gen should have in their
| leafs and stars:
|
| >> _" Ive often wondered if shirts with Epaulets equipped with
| LED IR lights might provide a shroud"_
|
| Every general/col/maj should have this technology integrated in
| uniform.
| 0cVlTeIATBs wrote:
| Provides a new meaning to "glow in the dark"
| samstave wrote:
| You dont wear these in combat (under certain circumstances)
| (( you develop different frequencies/delivery mthods, but I
| think your point is more valid.
|
| Yes you can thwart via, but then - you wind up just
| tracking anyone with it.
|
| Thus you need a "rain" of micro particles in a crowd where
| every single particle sets off said "anti-sensors"
|
| How cyberpunk do you want to get with the designs?
| samstave wrote:
| Its the double edged sword, the tip of the spear...
| https://youtu.be/cpixhDPSl40?t=59
| SeanLuke wrote:
| I don't like the idea of a hoodie blasting high power IR which
| could easily get into your eyes. Perhaps it'd be better to make a
| camera-shy baseball cap.
| deeviant wrote:
| Privacy is both important and valuable. However, during the
| product demonstration, was it truly necessary to have the actor
| dressed entirely in black, walking into someone's backyard? What
| specific use case do they believe they are showcasing with this
| demonstration?
| samstave wrote:
| Does it have A 100% FARADAY cage pocket to put the biometronomic
| tracking device (phone) within in addition to shield that, plus
| an array of UV lights to shim cams off?
| brk wrote:
| This would not be highly effective with most modern security
| cameras. First, color low-light video is becoming more common, as
| image sensor technology has progressed. When a
| digital/surveillance camera is in color mode, there is an IR
| filter in front of the lens to remove these wavelengths from
| reaching the imager (they cause color tinge issues).
|
| Even for cameras that are not in color mode in low-light video,
| most newer units have good dynamic range, whereas these low-power
| IR LEDs would likely not be able to fully obscure a persons face
| in the video.
| Valgrim wrote:
| Not every color camera has an IR filter, many phones and webcam
| lack such a filter and can see IR very well (on my phone it has
| a distinctive purple hue).
|
| Probably this tint is compensated for in normal light.
| brk wrote:
| But phones and webcams don't really seem to be the target
| audience for this.
| atahanacar wrote:
| That distinctive purple hue is a result of the IR filter.
| Filters on consumer cameras don't block 100% of IR, which is
| visible as that purple color. Useful for checking if remotes
| are working properly.
| dTal wrote:
| I don't think it's because of the IR filter. I have removed
| filters from several color webcams and they always see IR
| as purpley. I think it's the bayer filter - the different
| color channels clearly have different sensitivities to IR.
| atahanacar wrote:
| Yeah, what I mean is the existence, the visibility of a
| _slight_ purple hue. If the camera has no IR filter, you
| don 't just see a slight purple hue on the LED itself,
| but you see the light just like you'd see a visible
| wavelength LED.
|
| I actually was obsessed with IR cameras and mods for some
| reason around 10-12 years ago. I remember using developed
| empty photo films to block visible light and let only IR
| through after removing the IR filter.
| [deleted]
| dmillar wrote:
| Great 2600 vibe
| snshn wrote:
| https://www.exer.ai/posts/gait-recognition-using-deep-learni...
| m1117 wrote:
| Perfect for people in san francisco robbery business!
| hyperific wrote:
| Also check out:
|
| https://petapixel.com/2016/07/01/anti-paparazzi-scarf-makes-...
|
| https://adam.harvey.studio/cvdazzle/
| verall wrote:
| Looks like a safety concern honestly, a bunch of bright IR lights
| flashing around your face isn't good for your eyes.
| brk wrote:
| actually no, the 850nm wavelength of common IR LEDs does not
| have any adverse affect on your eyes at these power levels.
| verall wrote:
| Do you have a source or something? I'm not trying to doubt
| you but I'm interested in learning further. I work on cameras
| with IR emitter and there are many safety protocols, emitter
| covers, warning signs, etc. for a simple IR camera that we
| are instructed to abide by.
| brk wrote:
| I work with a company that makes high-power IR illuminators
| and we just went through certification testing with some
| units that are roughly 100x the output power of this
| example and they did not pose an eye hazard.
|
| There is a bunch of stuff online about exposure to IR-A
| wavelengths, which covers the common IR LED/illuminator
| wavelengths. You certainly CAN build something which can
| cause various kinds of eye damage, but it is going to be a
| unit that you can literally feel the heat off of. For
| practical purposes, you couldn't make a wearable battery
| powered device that would be likely to cause eye damage
| without the entire thing being very large and unwieldy,
| assuming of course you are using standard incoherent
| (eg:non-laser) source.
| ldehaan wrote:
| [dead]
| unxdfa wrote:
| Just wear a buff over your face. The batteries don't go flat on
| those.
| adolph wrote:
| Many security CMS at this point use wifi for data. Wouldn't a
| network attack with a deauthor or the like be as effective and
| less eye catching?
| cronix wrote:
| Wouldn't the brim of the hat be the best place as it's closest to
| the face, and probably more robust than within clothing?
| stainablesteel wrote:
| if you really wanted this to work you would wear the strobes all
| over so they don't pick up arm movements or leg gait, i'd even go
| as far as all of your knees, feet, elbows, shoulders, and
| wrists/fingers
|
| if you can eliminate your movements and shape then you're ahead
| of the game, otherwise you're identifiable
| kabdib wrote:
| How much do you have to worry about high-intensity IR damaging
| eyesight?
| metadat wrote:
| Could these IR-LEDs be effective for movie theaters to prevent
| pirate cammers from creating viable recordings? Seems like it'd
| be pretty easy to implement if the studios really felt threatened
| by piracy.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| The movie isnt in IR
| metadat wrote:
| The idea is the IR lighting would be placed up front beside,
| below, or above the projector screen, and interfere with the
| visual recording device to ruin the captures. In my
| experience digital camera sensors are sensitive to IR light
| in low light environments.
|
| I've never tried in a movie theater :p but have noticed this
| effect by pointing my phone camera at an IR television remote
| and pressing some buttons. The IR LED lights up and is only
| visible to the camera and not the naked eye.
|
| Anyhow, I'm more just curious why studios / cinemas don't
| take relatively simple measures like this to prevent pirate
| recordings from being created. Perhaps the IR would be too
| easy to circumvent via a physical lens filter.
| world2vec wrote:
| Now that more and more cameras use AI models to detect and infer
| things in real time, wonder if a very specific adversarial
| t-shirt could render the wearer completely invisible to the AI
| (not to humans looking at the CCTV monitors or the video
| recordings). I think William Gibson wrote something like that in
| the Zero History book, "the ugliest t-shirt in the world" or
| something
| pixl97 wrote:
| Assuming that only one AI model is in use against you....
| thfuran wrote:
| There are a bunch of papers about adversarial patterns on
| shirts, glasses frames, make-up, etc. The problem is that the
| more discreet it is, the more overtuned to specific models
| it'll tend to be. If you really want to reliably foil face
| recognition, you can walk around in a ghillie suit and camo
| face mask, I suppose.
| mikece wrote:
| Nothing like putting giant flashing sign on yourself that says
| "I'm purposely trying to avoid surveillance"...
| bobsoap wrote:
| > As the hoodie uses IR light, it's [sic] effects are
| imperceptible by human eyes when activated, only effecting IR
| sensitive equipment.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _only effecting IR sensitive equipment_
|
| to which it shows up as a giant flashing sign
| carlosjobim wrote:
| You turn it on when you don't want to be identified by
| cameras.
| shagie wrote:
| So all those digital video cameras that are pointing around
| to be used in visible light or low light conditions (like
| those for retail surveillance) will now have a person with a
| blinking light on them as people look at the closed circuit
| feeds during regular business hours.
|
| https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00025283
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I mean that's what regular hoodies are to me already. It makes
| you look like you're going to rob a petrol station for meth
| money with a screw driver.
| zht wrote:
| lol what?
|
| you think wearing hoodies is an indication that you are ready
| to commit violent theft?
| gorjusborg wrote:
| I also didn't realize that police officers used HN.
| officeplant wrote:
| Why else would all the stores around here have signs that
| say "No Hoodies / No Sagging Pants" /s
|
| I hate society.
| e12e wrote:
| Welcome to Peckham?
| bluedino wrote:
| People wear facemasks in camera footage now, so you have to go by
| their pants, belts, shoes, fingerprints..
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Gait analysis is a more surveillable fingerprint anyway, since
| it can work with lower resolution cameras. Tag someone on a
| high res camera with facial recognition and as long as you've
| seen their gait once, you'll be able to identify them again.
| jandrese wrote:
| Has gait analysis been studied by people other than the ones
| selling gait monitoring equipment? It smells to me like bite
| mark analysis, blood splatter analysis, polygraphs, and other
| "miracle" technologies/techniques that turned out to be
| horsecrap.
| mcbits wrote:
| There are people I know that I can recognize by the way
| they walk, so the idea is at least plausible. I think the
| main problem is/will be from using the analysis
| inappropriately.
|
| It's one thing to narrow down a city-sized population to a
| list of 50 people known to walk with a similar gait, and
| then follow up with other forms of investigation before
| drawing conclusions. It's another for a cop to look at the
| top match and go arrest that guy, as they've done more than
| once with facial recognition.
| pvarangot wrote:
| I don't think gait analysis would hold itself through a trial
| or be bought by a jury. Maybe to correlate different videos
| of possibly different suspects? But if you are getting
| regularly videoed by security cameras while circumventing
| rules you are probably already wearing different shoes or
| pants and that can go a long way to defeat gait analysis
| algos.
| devmor wrote:
| It's quite literally more accurate than fingerprint or
| blood splatter analysis and those send people to prison on
| a daily basis - despite being little more than snake oil
| techniques.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Stones in our shoes, masks on our faces, strobing hoodies a
| boring dystopia indeed.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| An uncomfortable and time consuming one indeed.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Discussed previously, apparently (found via Google search
| for `anti gait recognition shoes`, lol):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18401892
|
| I like the comment about the Ministry of Silly Walks.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| IIRC stones in shoes as a gait recognition defence were a
| plot point in Doctorow's _Little Brother_ (2008).
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Yeah I read that in a novel too. It's a common idea.
| beardedwizard wrote:
| Because spies actively use the technique and it's
| routinely discussed in that setting.
| zirgs wrote:
| Here's a handy guide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minis
| try_of_Silly_Walks#/m...
| tiagod wrote:
| Gait analysis also works surprisingly well and I don't see how
| to make it less effective without damaging your body
| blobbers wrote:
| Show me a security camera that does gait analysis and I will
| pay you $1000.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528835-600-cameras
| -...
|
| I thought I once saw on Reddit that target already uses
| this in stores. I could be wrong.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| https://ggbmagazine.com/article/in-the-masked-age-
| operators-... Here you go. they use them in China already.
| blobbers wrote:
| Ah yes, ggbmagazine. Clearly a Hikvision product you can
| buy...
| aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote:
| You're offering to pay a grand to random HN contributors to
| wire one up.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Maybe that's the point? Maybe the person needs one of
| these and $1000 is well worth it, and it just needs to be
| aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote:
| I don't get that sense.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The person knows no cameras exist doing gait detection,
| but wants one. They make a random comment on HN, a forum
| known to be read by people that is full of people will
| take an idea to completion "over a weekend", as a
| challenge to get someone to do something for $1000.
| That's a ridiculously low amount for something to come
| into existence that would serve their need directly.
| Hell, there's probably people here that would do
| something like this for the clout.
| blobbers wrote:
| No, I know that where security cameras are positioned and
| the amount of processing they currently have there will
| be no gait analysis being done on the camera itself. They
| have enough trouble telling one person from another
| reliably.
|
| I was being facetious as I don't believe hackernews
| readership is that enterprising.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I was going to make an edit with something along the
| lines of "or the poster was taking the piss out of the
| concept being real", but left it alone ;-)
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Everyone walking around in huge rigid gowns/boxes of uniform
| size.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| The privacy concerned will walk around look like Minecraft
| characters.
| wstuartcl wrote:
| There have been pretty huge leaps over partially obstructed
| facial recognition algorithms in the last few years -- I think
| state of the art is approaching no meaningful loss of match
| mask vs no mask.
| blobbers wrote:
| Negative ghost rider.
|
| It is most certainly not, unless you're talking straight on
| well lit training data.
| wstuartcl wrote:
| This is not my understanding, I have read at least 7 or 8
| papers that seem to have for various models and techniques
| reduced the delta between masked and unmasked recognition
| to be very similar on false positive and positive rates.
|
| https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/16/7310 https://www.scien
| cedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240589632... ...
|
| That said I have no insight as to how many of these
| techniques have been found to scale well or have started to
| make it into product. It has been publicly reported that
| NEC's NeoFace (a system that many police and govt use)
| newer versions does indeed have occlusion (mask)
| recognition operating at very high levels.
|
| anyways thats just my understanding as an interested
| bystander -- not in the field.
| snapcaster wrote:
| How could this be true? I don't follow the field but so much
| of the signal is being obscured it's hard to imagine how
| accuracy wouldn't suffer
| flangola7 wrote:
| tldr machine learning is magic
|
| iPhone face unlock has worked while wearing a mask for a
| while now.
|
| You know how you can identify exactly which family member
| is walking in the door from across the house, and maybe
| even what mood they're in? Or how little clarity you need
| to identify your child or spouse on a 480p camera feed?
| That's what machine learning makes possible across all
| types of sensor input, picking out those little but
| distinct patterns. There's really no way to be anonymous in
| public once ML surveillance software is widespread.
| joering2 wrote:
| Our gated community spent $80,000 on upgrading their cameras
| system and bought state-of-the-art 5MP surveillance cams (total
| of 5 of them) that "lets you read license plates from within 100
| meters" and "does a color-in-the-night type recording". They were
| sold on upgrading the whole freaking network of cables to cat 9
| for God only knows reason. And I kid you not - less than 2 months
| later, we were hit and 6 cars were stolen. Apparently it doesn't
| matter how fancy your camera is, if the perpetrator setup a stand
| alone red laser at cost of $6 that shines directly at it...
| ec109685 wrote:
| Reminds me of the time I was looking at my uncle's AV setup.
| Back then, you had multiple ways of delivering video between
| components: RCA, Composite and a variety of others.
|
| The tech person had every possible path wired up with Monster
| video cables. A waste of probably $500!
|
| For your gated community, it seems like a detection for the
| video feed going haywire that calls the cops might be useful.
| joering2 wrote:
| That's another 80 grand, man...
| LoganDark wrote:
| > state-of-the-art 5MP surveillance cams
|
| How is that state of the art? My phone from 2015 had 21
| megapixels[0].
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moto_X_Play#Hardware
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