The use of such technology is a severe infringement on our right to privacy (both our physical and digital privacy). When facial recognition is used by law enforcement, it is the equivalent of stopping and searching everyone in an area at once. Furthermore, this technology still suffers from racial bias and may result in unnecessary action from police.

When deployed in consumer products (e.g. smart glasses), facial recognition could be used in far more sinister ways. Imagine a stranger identifying your name, social media profile, and contact details at a literal glance.

Additionally, even facial recognition technology used by law enforcement, is often Chinese-owned software. There is a complete lack of transparency over what happens with our data, and the risks over data handling only increase as facial recognition becomes more commonplace.

Lastly, we were not consulted on the implementation and usage of this new technology. Therefore, for those of us that oppose its use, we must be able to adequately defend against it.

Adversarial fashion refers to the use of clothing patterns specifically designed to confuse surveillance systems. It is a type of functional clothing in that the garments serve an additional purpose rather than simply acting as a covering.

In the case of GlitchWear, our adversarial patterns are designed to confuse facial recognition systems in particular. We are focusing on this use case because we feel this is where adversarial fashion has the greatest utility and where we can have the biggest impact to protect your privacy.

However, there are other use cases e.g. filling ANPR cameras with junk data or clothing that disrupts flash photography.

While a normal hat or cap may partially obscure your face, facial recognition technology is advanced enough that it can identify a person based on features such as the eyes, mouth, and upper nose. Even a face mask may not provide sufficient protection.

GlitchWear has been developed to, importantly, confuse the AI algorithm. Our high contrast and asymmetric adversarial fashion designs make it harder for facial recognition systems to detect your face at all, or identify where key facial landmarks should be (e.g. eyes, nose).

From our perspective, one of the most important things consumers can do to oppose facial recognition technology is to wear adversarial fashion.

There are alternative brands to GlitchWear that offer various levels of protection (be wary of any brand that suggests it guards 100% against facial recognition technology - besides wearing a balaclava, this is not possible). There are even fewer brands that are solely focused on creating garments to avoid detection, as we are.

Our brand differentiates itself by providing discrete and affordable adversarial fashion options, that fit in with your everyday life. Wear a BEANonymous beanie on your commute to work, or our Snood as a face mask on a cycle ride through town. Additionally, They can be easily removed or adjusted if you find yourself in a location that is unlikely to have facial recognition cameras.