Bill Swearingen spent the past year developing a pattern that can defeat being detected by surveillance cameras, including vehicles and people.
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Bill Swearingen spent the past year developing a pattern that can defeat being detected by surveillance cameras, including vehicles and people. At Def Con, for the first time, he demoed the pattern printed on a car against a Flock camera to prove it works. (One of my favorite talks from Def Con this year!)
More by me at TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/09/this-adversarial-pattern-can-prevent-surveillance-cameras-from-detecting-you/
Ad-blocker bypass: https://web.archive.org/web/20260810033558/https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/09/this-adversarial-pattern-can-prevent-surveillance-cameras-from-detecting-you/
@zackwhittaker strong #uglyshirt vibes, because of this paragraph in particular.
Each pattern can be used once and must be promptly discarded, never to be seen again.
@GreatDismal still in my mind with that one, even after all this time.
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@Barkeep @zackwhittaker interesting read
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Bill Swearingen spent the past year developing a pattern that can defeat being detected by surveillance cameras, including vehicles and people. At Def Con, for the first time, he demoed the pattern printed on a car against a Flock camera to prove it works. (One of my favorite talks from Def Con this year!)
More by me at TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/09/this-adversarial-pattern-can-prevent-surveillance-cameras-from-detecting-you/
Ad-blocker bypass: https://web.archive.org/web/20260810033558/https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/09/this-adversarial-pattern-can-prevent-surveillance-cameras-from-detecting-you/
two questions
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if this becomes popular, how long before Flock figures out how to defeat this ?2
This will probably be so rare that it will make you instantly identifiable egI read, maybe 20 years ago, that so few people use add ons to their browsers (like ad blockers) that using add ons increases your fingerprint and makes you more easily trackable across the web
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@cR0w in the last year or so my state introduced “blackout” plates that are license plates with bright white characters on an all black field. A lot of people have been saying it’s to make it easier for computers to read your plate and track you.
I guess they don’t realize that mobile plate scanners on vehicles and stationary readers at places like toll plazas have been doing this for decades already. Easier? Maybe. But it didn’t seem overly difficult before.
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Bill Swearingen spent the past year developing a pattern that can defeat being detected by surveillance cameras, including vehicles and people. At Def Con, for the first time, he demoed the pattern printed on a car against a Flock camera to prove it works. (One of my favorite talks from Def Con this year!)
More by me at TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/09/this-adversarial-pattern-can-prevent-surveillance-cameras-from-detecting-you/
Ad-blocker bypass: https://web.archive.org/web/20260810033558/https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/09/this-adversarial-pattern-can-prevent-surveillance-cameras-from-detecting-you/
@zackwhittaker Nice work. Looking forward to the video.
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Bill Swearingen spent the past year developing a pattern that can defeat being detected by surveillance cameras, including vehicles and people. At Def Con, for the first time, he demoed the pattern printed on a car against a Flock camera to prove it works. (One of my favorite talks from Def Con this year!)
More by me at TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/09/this-adversarial-pattern-can-prevent-surveillance-cameras-from-detecting-you/
Ad-blocker bypass: https://web.archive.org/web/20260810033558/https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/09/this-adversarial-pattern-can-prevent-surveillance-cameras-from-detecting-you/
Oh can't wait to see his latest talk. Bill did another talk a few years back on defeating radar guns. Love his approaches to surveillance and privacy issues
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Bill Swearingen spent the past year developing a pattern that can defeat being detected by surveillance cameras, including vehicles and people. At Def Con, for the first time, he demoed the pattern printed on a car against a Flock camera to prove it works. (One of my favorite talks from Def Con this year!)
More by me at TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/09/this-adversarial-pattern-can-prevent-surveillance-cameras-from-detecting-you/
Ad-blocker bypass: https://web.archive.org/web/20260810033558/https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/09/this-adversarial-pattern-can-prevent-surveillance-cameras-from-detecting-you/
@zackwhittaker Man, if they had this in a polo...
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@cR0w @zackwhittaker You've misunderstood the goal. The goal is not to make the vehicle anonymous, the goal is to make searching for it amidst the thousands of hours of footage incredibly annoying because detections are not flagged by the system and therefore easily searchable
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@cR0w @zackwhittaker You've misunderstood the goal. The goal is not to make the vehicle anonymous, the goal is to make searching for it amidst the thousands of hours of footage incredibly annoying because detections are not flagged by the system and therefore easily searchable
@sleepysaf @zackwhittaker You've misunderstood my intent. The intent was to share a comic that is related to OP that I found entertaining.
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@zackwhittaker Disable my adblocker? Thanks but I’ll just read the story elsewhere.
@Seedymofo
or even better: keep adblocker but disable #javascript too, and then read article. @zackwhittaker -
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