Using fashion to counter tracking and AI surveillance – that is the concept behind Leipzig start-up Urban Privacy. For several years, Nicole Scheller and Daniel Preuß have been developing products such as anti-tracking jackets. They do not make their wearers invisible, but they do make them harder to track.
On the jackets there is a face-like pattern that confuses AI cameras. The asymmetric, loose cut also makes it harder for the software to assign a gender to the person being filmed.
"The main problem is simply that we do not know where the data ends up," explains designer Nicole Scheller. Digital data, she says, is the new resource. As an example, Scheller cites Instagram’s parent company Meta, which sells, among other things, sunglasses with cameras.
The start-up’s bestseller is a smartphone pouch that takes the phone completely off the network. GPS tracking is blocked as well, so the handset can no longer be traced.
QR code scarf against unwanted photos
