We can’t stop progress, and an engineer just invented a sweatshirt… a surveillance camera. A whole program.
The camera-shy hoodie. This name simply hides a sweatshirt that is supposed to blind security cameras. An idea that came from Mac Pierce, an engineer and defender of privacy who wants to impress with his particularly ingenious invention against the most famous security system.
How to blind a security camera
The Camera Shy Hoodie is therefore an anti-surveillance hoodie with 12 high-power infrared LEDs sewn directly onto the fabric. With a switch sewn into the sleeve, the wearer can flash the LEDs, flooding any nearby security cameras with infrared light and blinding them at night. The brilliant idea is that the wearer and anyone nearby can’t tell if the device is on or off because the light is…infrared.
Because the sweatshirt uses infrared light, its effects are imperceptible to the human eye when activated and only affect devices sensitive to that light
Pierce said the hoodie cost around $200 to make and was assembled mostly from off-the-shelf parts. Pierce has released all software and plans related to the making of the hoodie using a Creative Commons license.
The only really tricky component is the IR LED I chose, a very high efficiency, high power LED that’s actually used in security cameras as an infrared illuminator for those cameras so they can illuminate an area with light to see what’s going on happening in this flooded area
A very specific goal
The goal behind this creation is simple and Pierce doesn’t hide it at all. It is an ethical principle:
Surveillance technology has advanced enough to be so powerful and ubiquitous. And only now do we realize, “Maybe we don’t want this thing to be as powerful as it is. The reason I came up with this is because I want people to see this project and think, ‘Oh that’s right, these technologies aren’t foolproof.’ There are ways to push them back, we can’t just accept the status quo.
