- Bill Swearingen’s noRecognition project generates patterns that stop camera software from classifying what it covers—people, faces, or cars.
- The patterns defeated all 11 open-source detection algorithms he tested, including the software behind Flock license plate readers, Axon body cameras, and Clearview AI.
- The first public test came Friday at Def Con in Las Vegas: a 2009 Toyota Yaris wrapped in the pattern, driven past a Flock camera.
Bill Swearingen spent the past year running experiments from his Kansas City home, where he co-founded the SecKC security meetup. About 31 million tests later, he says he can produce patterns on demand that hide whatever they cover from the detection software wired into Flock cameras.
He demonstrated it publicly Friday at Def Con, working with YouTube channel Donut Media to cover a 2009 Toyota Yaris in one of his newest patterns and roll it past a Flock camera. “We proved it was effective,” Swearingen told TechCrunch, though he said the wheels were a challenge.
The pattern doesn’t blind the camera; footage still records normally, and humans see a car. What breaks is the object-detection model that decides “that’s a vehicle, that’s a plate, log it.”
Consequently, feed an AI detector with visual noise engineered against its own math and it logs nothing. Swearingen built it with a reinforcement learning model that grades its own homework, and he is keeping the strongest patterns offline so camera vendors cannot train against them.
“Privacy is a fundamental right,” he said, calling the patterns a way for people to opt out of being tracked. Flock faces a growing backlash on Capitol Hill, and internal documents show it pitched a plan to turn 350,000 Uber and Lyft dashcams into a rolling plate-scanning fleet.
Automated readers have already pulled over innocent drivers at gunpoint over bad matches. Meanwhile, Swearingen’s noRecognition project is running a crowdfunding campaign to fund early merchandise—T-shirts and hoodies now, vehicle skins later.
“Every failure improves my model, and so [the patterns] keep getting better and better,” Swearingen said.
✅ Follow BITNEWSBOT on Telegram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X.com, and Google News for instant updates.
Previous Articles:
- Cerebras shares sink 15% as hardware revenue drops 23% in Q2
- Goldman Sachs buys NEOS for $2.25B, adds Bitcoin/Ether ETFs
- SEC innovation exemption allows 24/7 tokenized stock trading
- Coldcard Hack Drives $15B Bitcoin Exodus to Safer Wallets
- Crypto OG Tone Vays admits ‘idiot’ move giving hackers PC access
