Designers say that as well as offering a degree of protection from surveillance, their clothes make a powerful fashion statement about the importance of privacy
He emphasised that because surveillance systems are so powerful, no design can guarantee security from detection, but said “the added value of fashion is to spread awareness and help propagate public discourse”.
Preuß said his designs used large-scale prints, asymmetrical cuts and streetwear-inspired silhouettes to confuse facial recognition algorithms. The company said its Urban Ghost coat integrates LEDs into the hood that emit infrared light to dazzle night-vision surveillance cameras.
Preuß, who co-founded his company after reading about the whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about US surveillance in the Guardian, said his designs played with the fact that “facial recognition systems freak out when they see multiple faces at once”.
“Our patterns play with that chaos, confuse algorithms and make it way harder to pin you down,” he said.
Bell, however, said “none of these products are tried and tested, and a lot of these surveillance technologies can deal with a little resistance … [but] even if the designs don’t necessarily work perfectly, fashion is also a visible sign of resistance.
They don’t have a lot of technical details but essentially what these do is try to look maximally like ‘eyes’ or whatever other targets are used by facial recognition to some AI model.
They have to choose which model(s) to train against and there is no guarantee that the same output would fool a differently trained model.
The IR LED dazzlers should work against anything that is using IR as they work by overloading the sensor. The issue is that most cameras are not using IR in most conditions and will switch to visible wavelengths with enough light.
You could technically do the same thing with visible lights, but you’re going to annoy people if you’re walking around in a hoodie ringed with 1,000 lumen LEDs.
My first thought when I saw this - “oh hey look, razzle dazzle clothes” which is my personal mental association of the famous scene in Stripes movie, with Dazzle Camouflage which I always thought was a neat idea.
In late May 2026 images appeared on social media showing Russian Ural and KAMAZ trucks painted in the classic dazzle camouflage. Supposedly the unusual paint scheme is to confuse Ukrainian drones controlled by artificial intelligence and disrupt their pattern recognition, and not to trick the human eye. Ukraine has experimented with AI for targeting as seen in Operation Spiderweb, and is conducting a deep strike campaign to disrupt Russian logistics.[72][73]
From my understanding (which could be incorrect, I mean I wasn’t there), the pattern applied to the hull was done differently per ship. I imagine they applied the base pattern in a random tile-like build where things can be rotated and moved around in the design before painting.
I don’t think that’s a problem, but I suppose it depends on your goals. Facial recognition in low-light conditions is already hard enough of a problem that they, presumably, are not building IR-light-clothing detection into their algorithms. And if IR-blasting clothing becomes commonplace enough that they start working on it, then it’s also no longer distinctive. So, if the goal is to defeat passive surveillance of your movements, this should be highly effective.
If a human reviews the footage, then none of this likely matters anyway, since they’ll be able to identify other identifying features about you—but that’s a scalability problem. You’d need to have done something very “interesting” to be worth investing the time into tracking across hundreds of video feeds through a surveillance network.
If your goal is to get away with a crime or actively resist detection while protesting, then this is (obviously) a bad idea to wear this. You should instead choose something as non-descript as possible, like all black, long sleeves, gloves, face mask, and tinted goggles. But you can’t just walk around in public like that, in general.
But does it work?
Still not sure.
They don’t have a lot of technical details but essentially what these do is try to look maximally like ‘eyes’ or whatever other targets are used by facial recognition to some AI model.
They have to choose which model(s) to train against and there is no guarantee that the same output would fool a differently trained model.
The IR LED dazzlers should work against anything that is using IR as they work by overloading the sensor. The issue is that most cameras are not using IR in most conditions and will switch to visible wavelengths with enough light.
You could technically do the same thing with visible lights, but you’re going to annoy people if you’re walking around in a hoodie ringed with 1,000 lumen LEDs.
Untested means, unlikely to work at all.
Maybe the IR LEDs at night.
My first thought when I saw this - “oh hey look, razzle dazzle clothes” which is my personal mental association of the famous scene in Stripes movie, with Dazzle Camouflage which I always thought was a neat idea.
I’d imagine it’s a bit of cat and mouse though, because if they train the drones to target that pattern they’d be sitting ducks
From my understanding (which could be incorrect, I mean I wasn’t there), the pattern applied to the hull was done differently per ship. I imagine they applied the base pattern in a random tile-like build where things can be rotated and moved around in the design before painting.
Thing is, I feel like having bright dazzling lights on your hoodie just fingerprints you even more, no?
Maybe if you use it strategically it could help, but I wouldn’t be sold on that feature
I don’t think that’s a problem, but I suppose it depends on your goals. Facial recognition in low-light conditions is already hard enough of a problem that they, presumably, are not building IR-light-clothing detection into their algorithms. And if IR-blasting clothing becomes commonplace enough that they start working on it, then it’s also no longer distinctive. So, if the goal is to defeat passive surveillance of your movements, this should be highly effective.
If a human reviews the footage, then none of this likely matters anyway, since they’ll be able to identify other identifying features about you—but that’s a scalability problem. You’d need to have done something very “interesting” to be worth investing the time into tracking across hundreds of video feeds through a surveillance network.
If your goal is to get away with a crime or actively resist detection while protesting, then this is (obviously) a bad idea to wear this. You should instead choose something as non-descript as possible, like all black, long sleeves, gloves, face mask, and tinted goggles. But you can’t just walk around in public like that, in general.
Translation is they don’t work.