THE CAMERA SHY HOODIE [2023]

The Camera-Shy Hoodie

The Camera-Shy Hoodie is a DIY adversarial garment designed to give the user the option to anonymize themselves within the recording of a night vision security camera.

The hoodie embeds a number of high-power IR LEDs, utilizing the same wavelength of infrared light commonly used by security cameras as flood lights for night vision. By pointing the LEDs back at the camera and setting them to a tuned strobe, the security camera’s capture becomes overexposed, significantly losing definition of the scene. The LED strobe, tuned to interfere with these cameras auto-exposure, causes a strong loss of definition where the light is strongest. In this layout, where the LEDs are arrayed around the upper chest, shoulders, and upper back of the wearer, that head of the wearer is then significantly obfuscated.

As the hoodie uses IR light, it’s effects are imperceptible by human eyes when activated, only effecting IR sensitive equipment.

A full package to make your own including a bill of materials, design files, reference photos, and a detailed assembly guide can be found here - [ZIP, 11.7MB]

A standalone assembly guide can be found here - [PDF, 625KB]

High resolution images and more media can be found here - [High-Res Gallery].

Motherboard article: [This Hacker Hoodie Uses Surveillance Camera Parts to Blind Surveillance Cameras]

Popular Science article: [A simple DIY hoodie can fool security cameras]

Hackaday: [Adversarial IR hoodie lets you own the night in anonymity]

An interview on the Watchman Privacy podcast about my facial recognition blocking projects can be found here: [Youtube]

If you’d like to purchase a kit of all the custom electronics needed to make your own, leave your email in the link below to be notified when it becomes available for pre-order.

[ Your email will not be shared with outside parties ]

Like this work? Consider donating so I can continue making open-source projects.