Yet another great video from Benn... however, I'm a bit disappointed that he isn't more explicit about how to protect your plates from these readers. I understand that he's likely doing it to protect himself (and his viewers) from legal recourse, and it's nice that he provides the code used to create and test the patterns, but I wish he had provided his research results to show which patterns were most effective at keeping the system from even detecting the presence of a plate.
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2025
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Well, we're all reasonably intelligent people. Let's collectively brainstorm!
It looks like masking with a random pattern made to look like dirt or debris is an option.
To negate night reads, how about 2-4 layers of optical polarizing film, each transverse to the previous plane of polarization? Alternately, a coating with a visible light transparent, IR opaque pigment.
Could even literally make it mud, if you have access to a laser cutter (hacker space, etc) you could use that and make a stencil instead, then mix up some mud in a bucket (a little clay content goes a long way) and smear that over the stencil and tada – legitimately just some mud on my plate officer.
IR strobes on opposite sides of your plate works while being legal in many areas since the plate stays unmodified.
The issue I see with that is you'd need to supply power to the lights, which wouldn't be impossible, but isn't exactly trivial.
I wonder if having a license plate frame that changes it to not be a rectangle would work? Maybe even cover the frame in reflective tape to help blind the camera?
You already have power there to the license plate illuminator lights. It shouldn't be super difficult to tap into that.
The trick is to tap into that power, while keeping things looking nice and neat. Most vehicles now have the license plate lights tucked away in housings. It would be nice to be able to have something that only uses the 2-4 screw holes that are used to hold the plates on since those are universal on vehicles sold in the US.
Sure.
But it's not that hard to access, you just need to remove the back panel on the inside to access the wires. The more important thing is knowing enough about electricity to be able to splice it in, but a YouTube video should be able to handle that.
Commenting just so I'll come back. Fuck every surveillance state. Hard. Repeatedly. The people need to say fuck off but too many fucking bootlickers out there, both left and right.
too many fucking bootlickers
I think there are also just a lot of regular people who are exhausted by the fight and just don't have the time, energy, or direction to know what to do about it.
I'm a regular ass taxpayer trying to feed my family. I do what I can to protect privacy. I use a VPN, self host whatever I can, shit like that. I can't stop driving to work so I can avoid cameras.
Anyone know of the website that tracks where these cameras are located?
Woah, this guy is great. I wish it were possible for me to do something like this full time, but I lack the wide skills he's got. I wonder how long it takes to get to that level? And I wonder if there's any organizations that might sort of scratch this itch? Been fantasizing about working for the IFF or something like that.
Really really love how he ends the video by insulting and criticizing the companies that asked him to be sponsored by them. Insane power move
He IS great. I saw him play at a festival a decade ago and all the equipment they provided failed. He just improvised a set, with lots of vocoder, and it was one of the best sets I’ve ever seen. (He’s The Flashbulb, if you haven’t heard him!)
Yooooooo what he's the Flashbulb!? Crazy lol. I've loved his music for years now. Did not at all realize it was the same guy. Taste goes with taste I suppose
I feel like bright UV LEDs would blind digital cameras too.
I've seen hats / hoodies with bright LEDs in non-visible frequencies for blocking facial recognition.
https://www.popsci.com/technology/camera-shy-hoodie-privacy/
Here's a link: https://odditymall.com/justice-caps-hide-your-face-from-surveillance-cameras
I think these are great. Wish they weren't marketing it for people that want to do "sketchy shit". I don't want to do that at all, but I also don't want to be constantly tracked and identified everywhere I go.
Even though "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" is bullshit, the primary market is people who have something to hide. Few people make more effort than grumbling online if they aren't actually afraid.
I have nothing to hide, but I also have nothing to show.
The movie Anon, I think, said it nicely: it's not that I have something to hide, it's that I have nothing I want you to see.
I favor grumbling to my representatives, tho' they are pretty much on the same page as me, thankfully.
Here is the video’s thumbnail.
I use an Extension called vidIQ to find and use the video thumbnail easily. The current thumbnail will be shown just below the video view count.
wait how is this relevant to the OP?
It relates to the video that OP shared here. It's the thumbnail of the video.
I'd like to see more videos posted with their thumbnails on Lemmy. So I periodically comment on videos that don't have them yet.
Does your client not automatically pull the thumbnail from the website?
It sadly does not. IIRC: lemmy.world devs removed this function a few updates ago because it was using up a lot of server CPU. I'd like for them to resolve it in the next update.
Ah, I see now.
TLDR apply spots or “noise” to your plates. Put some duct tape or something on it to confuse the idiot that is modern AI.
In many states, you're technically not able to alter the license plate or put stickers on it. But cameras don't know how big things are supposed to be. So put a frame around your license plate with all sorts of crazy.
In some states an obscured/unreadable license plate is all a cop needs to pull you over…
There are covers that mess up photography but still work for viewing normally with your eyes.
and they’re probably highly illegal pretty much everywhere because they stop speed and red light cameras working and that’s exactly their marketed purposes
The cameras should work fine, they would just require manual review.
for the tricks that mess up AI, yes
but i believe this comment was talking about things like IR blocking covers and such
Surely stoplight cameras take visible light pictures and only use IR for automated plate reading.
there are lots of different covers for license plates which block photography only, and allow humans to see the plate. i’m not sure how all of them work
A little dirt mixed into a clear paint. To a cop, it just looks like a dirty licence plate. To AI powered cameras it looks like T̶̗̈ℲM-ԀC̴̦͝)0
Great video and very illuminating about corporatised data surveillance. I wonder how these practices would fly in European or UK data environments. Big cities certainly have extensive CCTV coverage both law enforcement based and private but I'm not sure you could be selling personally identifying data like that.
He rightfully points out in the video that even if the data isn't sold, it could still be leaked and then proceeds to show how insecure the camera systems are. This kind of surveillance infrastructure just shouldn't exist to begin with.
I would be curious if there have been any pen testing against the police and municipal camera networks in the UK. I wonder how many of the vulnerabilities of the system in the video come from trying to use WiFi to save on costs of hardwired setups.
We've had them for a long time. In the London the "ring of steel" was installed as a result of the IRAs mainland bombing campaign in the 80s and of course has expanded as the various congestion and clean air zones have been rolled out. I doubt it would be politically possible to remove them now. While potential leaks are an issue at least public sector organisations have some degree of accountability for the cock ups.