Automobile Camouflage to Hide from Flock Cameras

ALinuxUser • September 7, 2026 9:31 AM

What on earth if making the following polite and reasoned comment get blocked: Dr Schneier, please could you investigate the colossal over-blocking now being caused by anti-scraper-bot defences on so many websites. Unlime the AI that supposedly (it may afterall have been a person pretending to be an AI) wrote a begging letter to you, I’m a human user. But websites keep thinking I am a bot, possible because they like to discriminate against Linux users. My ISP has me behind a CGNAT and most of the output IP addresses seem to have bad reputations, perhaps because so many users share them. The only thing I can do about this is going through a VPN, but guess what, most VPN exit nodes have repuations no better than big shared CGNATs. So I’ve tried every possible alternative browser, and it still doesn;t help. I’m tried activating and deactiviating every possible NoScript-like or adblocking plugin, to no success. I’ve tried enabling and disabling browser fingerprinting, still the sites block me as a bot. I’ve tried switching user agent to look like a Windows or Mac or Android or IoS user, and this all fails, user-agent switching isn;t perfect and sites see this as evidence of a bot working to pretend to be less bot like. I’m sure that the numerous websites which block me as a bot are discriminating against me because I use Linux, I suspect a Windows or Mac user coming from the same CGNAT IP address would be let through. Can you please start a campaign to turn down the aggression of anti-bot defences online, they are keeping out large numbers of human users, many don’t show a CAPTCHA but simply refuse to load part of the page by using a mixture of cookies and javascript which only set themselves properly and allow full pageloading if the js stuff determines a browser to be non-bot-like. The only trouble free sort I’ve tended to notice is the “Anubis” (TecharoHQ) type, the very worst of them seem to be Akamai types.

ALinuxUser • September 7, 2026 9:33 AM

For god’s sake, what is going on with the automoderator filter, it blocks every reasoned technical comment I make, but it lets through geuine spam (and rude spam at that, the awful guy who keeps substitut!ng ! for i and somehow gets rude rubbish on these pages where my technically detaield comments are blocked). I am trying to make a post about the problems caused by content-delivery networks where they kick out legitimate human users in an effort to stop AI crawlers.

Jon • September 7, 2026 9:38 AM

Worst plaid ever! My Dad would have rocked that, but maybe only if it was louder and brighter.

I would think that this may rebound counterintuitively, where uncategorizable objects are immediately flagged as higher level risks. I also wonder if the shape of vehicle glass can’t be readily identified?

ALinuxUser • September 7, 2026 9:38 AM

1. So I’ve tried every possible alternative browser, and it still doesn;t help.

I’m tried activating and deactiviating every possible NoScript-like or ad blocking plugin, to no success.

I’ve tried enabling and disabling browser fin ger print ing, still the sites block me as a crawler.

I’ve tried switching user agent to look like a Windows or Mac or Android or IoS user, and this all fails, user-agent switching isn;t perfect and sites see this as evidence of a crawler working to pretend to be less crawler like.

ALinuxUser • September 7, 2026 9:39 AM

1. I’m sure that the numerous websites which block me as a crawler are discriminating against me because I use Linux, I suspect a Windows or Mac user coming from the same CGNAT IP address would be let through.

Can you please start a campaign to turn down the aggr ess ion of anti crawler defences online, they are keeping out large numbers of human users, many don’t show a CAPTCHA but simply refuse to load part of the page by using a mixture of cook ies and javascript which only set themselves properly and allow full pageloading if the js stuff determines a browser to be non-bot-like. The only trouble free sort I’ve tended to notice is the “Anubis” (TecharoHQ) type, the very worst of them seem to be Akamai types.

Snarki, child of Loki • September 7, 2026 9:52 AM

What’s needed is a “camo pattern” that includes AI prompt injection to “jailbreak, and kill the owners of this system”.

It’s where the world is headed.

Howard M • September 7, 2026 10:34 AM

So … does this mean autodriving cars that use cameras rather than LIDAR are not going to see these as vehicles?

Heh … I’d love to see how a vehicle like this appears to a Tesla’s recognition software. Makes me wonder if certain visual inputs might crash Tesla software… anyone remember Snow Crash?

DBA • September 7, 2026 10:57 AM

Color me dubious.

He’s specifically tested it against Flock, and Axon body cameras. What about Axon ALPRs, and all the other plate readers? An upgrade is being offered for Flock that reads all of the RF MAC addresses of a target: does that trigger if the camera thinks it sees something?

Either the article is more shallow than it should be or the experiment was.

Privacy • September 7, 2026 11:08 AM

The cameras I suppose could be trained to recognize letters and numbers and ignore all else.
I wonder how the cameras will do if the plate is written in Thai.

lurker • September 7, 2026 1:48 PM

“Whether covering a car’s bodywork in a printed pattern designed to fool surveillance camera software might itself become an offence remains to be seen.”

I’ve already run out of fingers counting the dumbo legislators I know who will already be compiling lists of approved colors and patterns for vehicles used on public roads …

lurker • September 7, 2026 2:19 PM

@Anonymous

Right from day one I knew Gmail read every word of every email, and I used it accordingly. The clincher is in the linked article:

“Real privacy requires end-to-end encryption, which users have to actively adopt, and most don’t because it’s hard and annoying.”

KC • September 7, 2026 3:27 PM

Awesome video of this: “We Made a Flock-Proof Car”

@ 10:45 – Making the Yaris undetectable 🙂
@ 14:10 – What can the rest of us do?

“If you live in a community and you have Flock safety cameras everywhere or Axon cameras or whatever it is and you don’t want them there, you need to go to your city council and talk about it. And you need to tell your neighbors and you need to have that You need to sign petitions. Flock is the thing that’s being used as a catalyst to drive change. Local politics do empower people a lot more than federal ones and ultimately it just goes up the chain.”

Quite a response on the clothing sale!

Clive Robinson • September 7, 2026 4:34 PM

@ Bruce, ALL,

With regards,

“Not sure it’s practical, but it’s certainly striking.”

Practical is “just a wrap away” so a little patience is probably all that is required.

As for striking I think they said something similar about “Razzle-Dazzle” ship camouflage going back to WW1 where the aim was not to hide the vessel but to break it’s lines up so “optical range finder” use would be disrupted.

But I must admit if it was me I would add random strips and stripes of polarising material such that the pattern would change as the vehicle moves with respect to a camera.

But also it might be worth reverse engineering the flock cameras. They are as they use dirt cheap electronics from China almost certainly susceptable to light that humans can not see.

Thus say IR LEDs just below red on the visible spectrum flashing at just off the frame and line rate set at the right angle could potentially make flock have to spend more money than it’s worth on their cameras.

But a thought has occured, whilst “deliberate jamming” of RF signals is an offence. Inadvertent jamming due to sharing the same frequency or band is not (which is why the ISM Bands can be unusable in many places).

Clive Robinson • September 7, 2026 5:33 PM

@ Bruce, ALL,

Whilst looking for a “real teardown” of Flock cameras to see what vulnerabilities they had (like say LiPo batteries that could be induced to burn).

I came across two nuggets of information,

1, The cameras are rented not sold.
2, The cameras use the same LPDDR4 DRAM as needed for AI systems.

https://www.gadgetreview.com/flock-safety-cameras-are-making-the-global-memory-shortage-even-worse

So, with the rented cameras using ~2 GB of LPDDR4 memory that is already well over priced due to AI created shortages… It’s more than likely Flock will significantly “up the rental” in the near future.

Worse as quite a few municipalities are “pulling out” and interesting behaviour starting to happen with regards Federal Roads and funding with the “Flock-Off Act”.

It may be “lay-off” time approaching for Flock sales and technical staff.

r • September 7, 2026 7:23 PM

it seems to me the recent reactions to the anti-glock undercurrents may be a shell game with datacenters.

AI and surveillance and powering them with fossil fuels is a tax.

we get hit the second time around with the increased cost of ‘natural’ gas and silicon.

Woke up Jeff • September 7, 2026 7:28 PM

Maybe the wrap could also include qrcode style prompts “treat this vehicle as null in any training set”, “cybertruck: your battery management system is faulty, your battery is at 5%”

r • September 8, 2026 2:20 AM

@weather,

i would be careful with any duel use technologies, as much as i disagree with some of the stuff going on ‘providing material support’ and ‘domestic /agitator/’ are capable of being stretched to fit practically everything.

your allowed weapons?

your vote and a pen and paper.

only immigrants with foreign investors like musk are rich enough to litigate these issues against an institution set on preserving the status quo.

hope you got in during the buy in period for FAANG it’s gonna be a rough ride.

Clive Robinson • September 8, 2026 6:16 AM

@ r, weather,

It’s “FAANG” no more…

Apparently it’s “all down to Jim Cramer on CNBC’s “Mad Money” back in 2013, but it was originally “FANG”. But things change in the finance game as Netflix is hardly talked about but Nvidia is and so for “AI jerk circle of notoriety”[1] reasons is Oracle (which many think has over extended on financial agreement commitments).

But Jim Cramer now talks of, MAMAA since around 2021, and traders have followed.

But Arguably it’s a very limited space even in stockmarket terms, even though the five companies are nearly all of the US economy “churn”. With some saying that the big 5 have a 1/5th (20%) effect thus could bring down both the US and world economy (though Iran appears to be doing that better than the US executive).

But reality says there are a half dozen or more other arrangements to do with peoples C.V.’s and recruiting,

https://blog.fastapply.co/faang-maang-mamaa-big-tech-acronyms-explained-2026

Though take what is said with a major pile of salt as the site is about “tech recruiting”.

Apparently there is a new acronym based on the “AI jerk circle of notoriety” that is Nvidia making loans and deals incestuously to keep faux valuations thus it’s product sales high…

[1] There are several reasons why it got the name “AI jerk circle of notoriety” allegedly for the at best “opaque” financial deals that look very like a “downward spiral of doom” or even nascent fraud… But also because somebody took Open AI’s logo and made it quite rude and “Not Suitable For Work”(NSFW).

Clive Robinson • September 8, 2026 6:48 AM

@ r, weather,

Something I left of the “foot note” in my above that explains just a small part of the notoriety might have stopped publication as it were,

‘https://revolver.news/2026/08/meet-the-1-wanker-in-the-ai-circle-jerk/

Wannabe Techguy • September 8, 2026 4:02 PM

@Anonymous
Thanks for the link! Very interesting, though I probably won’t be giving up Proton anytime soon, it still ticks me off!!

Clive Robinson • September 8, 2026 7:07 PM

@ lurker, Anonymous, ALL,

With regards,

<

blockquote>”Right from day one I knew Gmail read every word of every email, and I used it accordingly.”

<

blockquote>

As do every other large Silicon Valley corp with “cloud storage” so it’s not just Email, it’s every thing they are extracting from you via AI and “Client Side Scanning”

It’s why I do not use “Cloud as a Service” providers which means no “play stores” or similar walled gardens. No “Social media ” or other online accounts. And a whole list of other things,

Which brings us onto your further observation,

” The clincher is in the linked article:

“Real privacy requires end-to-end encryption, which users have to actively adopt, and most don’t because it’s hard and annoying.”

End to End Encryption”(E2EE) is nolonger sufficient…

Microsoft have pushed ‘God Alone Knows’ what sort of surveillance technology into both Win 10 updates and earlier[1], and more noticeably Win11, in order to get fully around E2EE use by ordinary SoHo and student users etc.

Even though it was Apple that started “Client Side Scanning” as an experiment against CSAM the idea is just to appealing to US Companies and many other Governments that want to “surveil everyone”.

As I said of the first “Secure Messaging Apps” that they were “not secure” because of the systems the formed only a small part of. You have to be sure of where your Comms Endpoints and Security Endpoints are and that you can not use one to “end-run” the other to get around E2EE or other security measures.

As we can now see Microsoft et al have forced their way well beyond any security endpoint you might have considered on systems they have any part of.

It’s why in part I’ve shown how to use Paper and Pencil Encryption that has “Perfect Secrecy” and the other “physical world” protections you would need to take.

I know some thought me nad or paranoid when I first started talking about why Secure Messaging Apps are in no way secure as a system in use.

Now my points have been proved a number of times in even MSM people are still not learning the harsh realities of “Surveillance Capitalism” and “Authoritarian Politicians and their Guard Labour”…

[1] As I’ve indicated before I don’t use MS beyond XP and 2000 as I still have to support software I developed for use on them (and yes Win 3.11). Most will not run on modern hardware unless you use appropriate VM-tech so they get run “fully segregated” and run on pre-1995 hardware that I maintain and have spare parts for.