As it turns out, surveillance cameras that have been “trained” to spot and read license plates aren’t all that good at discerning real ones from fakes. That makes it pretty easy to trick Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) systems with images of fake plates, making it possible to flood their databases with unusable information.

When hacker and fashion designer Kate Rose learned – through a conversation with Dave Maass, a researcher with the Electronic Frontier Foundation – that the plate readers kind of suck at their jobs, she got an idea. Her new line “Adversarial Fashion” is the result. Unveiled at the DefCon cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas last week, the garments spell out the words of the fourth amendment of the US constitution, which protects Americans from “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

The cameras, however, read the garments as real license plates, and the proof is in their databases. ALPRs are always on, and can collect thousands of plates per minute, so for the system, there’s nothing unusual about capturing so many individual plates at a time. As Rose’s presentation at DefCon noted, overloading this kind of surveillance technology is one of the main methods of confounding it (along with blocking the collection of information.)

If you’re interested in making your own, Rose has provided all of the information you need to do it. But her line of Adversarial Fashion is pretty affordable, with prices starting at $24.99 – check it out here, or follow the brand new Instagram account @adversarialfashion.

This fun bit of retrofuturistic tech genius looks like an ‘80s designer’s idea of a high-tech camera smashed up with a toy gun, and it actually works, taking and printing photos. Russian artist Dmitry Morozov combined a GameBoy screen with an Arduino processor, a camera, optical relays and an original GameBoy thermal printer.

The ‘gbg-8’ is attached to a plastic toy gun so you can literally ‘point and shoot.’ To take a photo, you pull the trigger (which might make selfies a bit… uncomfortable.)

As soon as the image is captured, the gadget prints out a streaky, blurry, pixelated image, just like we remember from the heyday of Nintendo. It may not be the greatest quality, but that’s hardly the point.

Would a cute, artistically designed chameleon sculpture make you feel better about being watched? A new series of CCTV camera cases by Italian designer Eleonora Trevisanutto transforms ugly, ordinary security equipment into decorative objects that make surveillance seem a little less intimidating.

You’re still being watched, sure, but by a lizard, squirrel, grasshopper, owl or an adorable abstracted bird. It’s like a kinder, gentler Orwellian vision of the future. “The camera is no longer a ‘looming control’ means, but a decor element, an integral part of the place in which it is located.”

The need for less intimidating CCTV cameras does make sense for places like retail stores, daycares and other businesses where security is necessary, as well as private homes. The models don’t just differ visually; each animal offers its own individual functions, equipped with vision systems that can perform different operations like face recognition. That’s right – that lizard knows exactly who you are.

While many of us are so used to seeing ordinary cameras virtually everywhere we go that we don’t even notice them anymore, Parson’s ‘Animal’ series was made to be seen.

Yo dawg, these 9 camera-shaped buildings allow you to take selfies with your camera in front of buildings built to look like cameras. Now say “cheesy”!

The Big Camera – Perth, Australia

(images via: Sascha Grant, About Australia, Philip Gostelow and Crosby Family)

The Big Camera, located about 130km (80-odd miles) east of Perth in Meckering, claims to be “the only museum, totally dedicated to photography, open to the public anywhere in Western Australia.” Well, mostly open. A note to trivia fans: Meckering’s original name was Beebering, and Baby are we glad they changed it!

(image via: Our Naked Australia)

In addition to displaying unique items of photographic memorabilia dating back to before the invention of photography itself, The Big Camera exhibits information relating to the 6.9 magnitude Meckering Earthquake of 1968 that destroyed most of the town’s buildings. We’re not sure if The Big Camera itself was built before the terrible tembor but if so, it must be shockproof.

Picture Perfect Nail Salon – Marion, NC, USA

(images via: Topix)

Step 1: Design your camera store in Marion, North Carolina to look like a big ‘ol camera. Step 2: Spend too much money on construction and end up selling your nifty camera-shaped store before it even opens. Step 3: Profit? Well, two out of three ain’t bad. Hopefully the “Picture Perfect Nail Salon”, which moved into the nearly completed building just after the images above were taken, is looking after Step 3 by raking in dough hand over fist.

The Darkroom – Hollywood & More

(image via: Sheridan ATV Film Festival)

The Darkroom, located at 5370 Wilshire Boulevard on Los Angeles, California’s Miracle Mile, opened in the mid-to-late 1930s. The store featured a nine foot tall black glass facade and window that aped the look of a period Argus 35mm camera.

(images via: Yesterland, Topazladygem and AllEars.net)

After the store shut (or shuttered) its doors for good, the location re-opened as a Mexican restaurant whose cosmetic exterior refinements couldn’t hide The Darkroom’s original humungous camera lens. Fans of programmatic architecture shouldn’t shed too many tears, however. The Disney company has perpetuated The Darkroom’s unique look by incorporating extensive elements of the design into its wholly-owned camera & photography supply stores located in Disney theme parks around the world.

Diego Castillo Roa’s Art Decal

(image via: PetaPixel)

Ever wonder what would happen if you turned a camera-shaped building inside out? Us neither but Chilean artist Diego Castillo Roa has done the next best thing: turned a circular window into a jumbo camera lens that, in the words of the Boomtown Rats, is “always looking atcha ah-ah-ah-ah!” Roa’s purely decorative concept saves tons’o’bucks by not requiring your home to actually look like a camera, though at least one big round window is one firm requirement. Not being perturbed by living in a fishbowl is another.

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Photo Finished 9 Snappy Camera Shaped Buildings

A giant two-story camera rises from the grass beside an ordinary suburban home in the hills of South Korea. The Dreamy Camera Cafe is housed in a re-creation of a vintage Rolleiflex, featuring two lens-like oversized windows offering panoramic views of the surrounding countryside.

The cafe was built by a former army helicopter pilot with a passion for photography and vintage cameras, who lives in the house next door with his family. A range of miniature and toy cameras are displayed on the first floor, with a collection of photographs tacked on the walls upstairs. The cafe even has paper towel holders shaped like film canisters.

It may be unusual, but the Dreamy Camera Cafe is hardly the first building shaped like a giant object – there’s a 40-foot-tall milk bottle building among others modeled after food items, and even a house shaped like a toilet.