In order to deceive surveillance cameras, a fashion designer and hacker has developed a new clothing line that allows people camouflage themselves as a car in the recordings.
The garments are also covered with license plate images that trigger automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, to inject junk data into systems used to monitor and track civilians.
ALPRs, which are typically mounted on street poles, streetlights, highway overpasses and mobile trailers, use networked surveillance cameras and image recognition to track license plate numbers, along with location, date and time.
According to the German News Agency, hacker and fashion designer Kate Rose showed off her inaugural line at the DefCon cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas.
It was inspired by a conversation with a friend who works at the Electronic Frontier Foundation about the low specificity or inaccuracy of a lot of plate readers on police cars.
The new fashion garments highlight the need to make computer-controlled surveillance less invasive and harder to use without human oversight, she said.
"A person walking along the sidewalk or in a crosswalk is often close enough, as the readers take in a pretty large visual field, and have problems with specificity. The line is conceptual, but I worked pretty hard to make sure that it can work on the street in daylight," she explained.
The collection includes shirts, hoodies, jackets, dresses and skirts covered in modified license plate images and other circuitry patterns. The garments prices range from $25 to $50.
According to the CNET.com website, when picking a size, you will need to consider not only fit, but maximum readability so the garments successfully deceive the surveillance cameras.