Hacker turns 31 million surveillance tests into a clothing line

Bill Swearingen has started selling clothing designed to confuse video surveillance systems.

The patterns came out of a project he calls noRecognition. Inc. reports the patterns were tested 31 million times.

The stated aim is to help people avoid surveillance cameras of the kind Flock supplies. Flock's cameras are widely deployed by police forces in the United States.

The order of events is the part founders should notice. The testing volume existed before the garments did.

That is validation of a specific and narrow kind. It says the patterns did something measurable against detection systems, not that anyone will buy a shirt.

What has not been made public is the substance behind the number. Neither the detection systems tested, nor the pass rate, nor who ran the tests has been stated.

A test count is not a success rate. Thirty-one million tests could describe a pattern that works most of the time or one that works rarely.

Anyone selling a product on a technical claim eventually has to publish the denominator. Buyers of privacy products tend to ask harder questions than buyers of T-shirts.

There is also the matter of what the clothing promises. Surveillance evasion is a claim a customer cannot easily verify for themselves, which puts the burden on the seller to show the working.

For founders, the useful lesson is cheap and repeatable. Swearingen built the evidence as a project first, then attached a price to it.

Pricing, the range and any sales figures have not been announced. As it stands, this is a research project that has just acquired a checkout.