Adversarial Fashion: clothes designed to confuse license-plate readers

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/10/chaffing-the-alprs.html

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They need to make motorcycle gear.

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Given the level of facial recognition crap going on, shirts/jackets/hoodies covered in faces would be cool.

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But to implement it, you have to hang from your bumper Indiana Jones style?
image

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This was my first thought, too. How hard would it be to get a bunch of images of peoples’ faces then plaster them all over a shirt/jacket/hoodie? What if you were to get faces of, say, people on the no fly list, then waltz into the local airport on your way to a vegas vacay? Would it set off plenty alarms? Could you be required to remove it, or turn it inside out? What if your plaster the inside lining with the same faces?

Fun concept, but not exactly sure how this is supposed to actually work. Are you supposed to be running down the middle of the street in your ALPR pencil miniskirt? As commented above, these patterns on a motorcycle jacket might actually have the intended effect. Otherwise it’s just very 90s looking techno geek fashion. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

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Exactly what I came to say. Although given the average squid, you could maybe argue that a hoodie IS motorcycle gear…

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It might read on a drive-by ANPR camera like you see attached to police and repo man cars. Maybe speed and red-light cameras too. But not likely. They look for the the plate in a certain part of the image, to avoid reading logos, bumper stickers, etc… they might even key on other vehicle features to find the plate.

It won’t fool the readers at tolls. Most of those illuminate the scene with a flash and rely on the retro-reflective paint on the plate. Some of them filter to IR to eliminate visible light interference.

I’m waiting to see a car wrap (or, even better, a custom paint job) made up of license plate images. Since it requires no tampering with your own plate, or use of other actual plates, it should be perfectly legal, right?

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See William Gibson’s book ‘Zero History’ and the ‘ugly tee shirt’, published in 2010.

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Yeah, just one face might work for me…

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Would make a better bumper-sticker.

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Oh hey, thanks! I probably saw that on BB and forgot all about it.

Looks like that’s more a conceptual design piece but it’s nice to know somebody’s done it.

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