4

LED Pattern Umbrellas

mifid/iStock/Getty Images

I can imagine tons of uses for a light-encrusted umbrella, such as finding my way around a strange city on a rainy night, attracting muggers when I inevitably get lost in the worst part of the town, and ultimately fending them off by accidentally electrocuting everything around me when I panickedly flail at them and manage to rip some wire or another.

Sentient City

To be fair, the CCD-Me-Not Umbrella is more than just some Christmas lights someone rigged into a stay-dry stick. The project's lights are ultraviolet, and thus visible only to CCD surveillance cameras. Basically, you're just a normal schmuck carrying an umbrella, and only special equipment will perceive you as a tentacle monster made of light.

Wait, isn't that basically the plot of They Live?

Why It Will Never Fool the System:

Ever seen Men In Black and its first sequel? They're movies that heavily rely on making stuff seem creepy and alien, and both use the whole "light stripes in clothes and equipment" visual trope as a surefire signal that Dorothy ain't in Kansas anymore. Both also feature similar key scenes in which a character (Will Smith's J in the first one, Tommy Lee Jones' K in the sequel) realizes that aliens are fucking everywhere when seeing these cyclists:

3

Facial Recognition Software Camo

Chris Harvey/Hemera/Getty Images

If you've ever felt the need to own a T-shirt with a Hawaiian pattern made entirely out of melting Michael Jacksons, it's your lucky day. I mean, clearly someone forgot to lock your cell in Arkham Asylum and Batman presumably hasn't found you yet, because you've secured a gadget with Internet connection and are reading this right now. Also, they now actually make those shirts I described. Behold:

Via Wired/Simone C. Niquille

That eye-socket-burning fashion statement comes from the mind of designer Simone C. Niquille, and it's custom-designed to combat Facebook's eerily accurate auto-facial recognition. It's basically a camo pattern for your face, only those brown and green blotches of ordinary camouflage are replaced by distorted images of celebrity impersonators. As a result, facial recognition programs go berserk trying to figure out if you're you or if you're a dozen Obama heads swirling down a cosmic toilet.

Via Wired/Simone C. Niquille

2

URME Masks

View Stock/View Stock/Getty Images

The obvious solution to the whole "hide your face from the cameras" dilemma is a mask, but unless you're in the middle of a riot and/or protest, that tends to draw more attention than it can divert. Besides, they can only keep facial recognition programs from catching your visage -- they can't fool them. Or can they? URME anti-surveillance masks attempt to offer an elegant solution to the problem by providing an identity to their masks. These hyper-realistic Mission: Impossible resin faces are 3D printed in the likeness of their creator, Chicago-based artist Leo Selvaggio, with intricate enough detail to fool most facial recognition software. Facial recognition software, it should be noted, doesn't give a shit about uncanny valley. The human eye, however, is another matter entirely:

Via Yahoo News

Why It Will Never Fool The System:

1

Gummy Bears

Riccardo_Mojana/iStock/Getty Images

So a bunch of Australian students figured out a way to cheat a biometric (fingerprint) reader that their high-end school had installed as their new sign-in system. They created fake fingerprints and came and went as they pleased without the system recognizing who was signing in and out.

Their material: gummy bears.

Via zdnet.com

It turns out that the gelatin in gummy bears has virtually the same consistency as the human skin. Just push a gummy-beared finger on the reader and voila! Instant access. Although the reader now believes you're a mutant with tiny bears for fingers and it's judging you quite harshly.

Why It Will Never Fool The System:

Man, I want this to work so bad. The prospect of someone just walking out of a candy store and thoroughly confusing state-of-the-art identification technology with a few pennies' worth of gelatin-based snacks is equal measures scary (if the terrorists use it) and hilarious (the way those students used it). Alas, the gelatin-related problems of fingerprint readers are well known within the industry; the gummy bear incident dates back to 2010, and the first cases of people gaming readers with the stuff happened way back in 2002, so it's reasonable to assume there have been a few patches in the technology over the years. In fact, the only readers this trick will likely work on are pretty simple entry-level devices. Also, the really important fingerprint readers tend to be watched over by large, burly men who will presumably notice and comment if you try to enter a NASA test facility looking like Freddy Krueger after a stop at the candy shop.

Still, it's hilarious to think that once upon a time, in a slightly smaller scale, that is exactly what happened -- and people got away with it. If there's an anti-surveillance memory worth cherishing, friends, that's probably it.

For more from Pauli, check out 5 Pop Culture Sex Toys That Can't Be Arousing To Anyone and 4 Strange Problems Only Celebrities Seem To Have.

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