[tumba]

In Zero History, the purpose of the shirt was not to fool the algorithm, but to trip a deep "gentlemen's agreement" between intelligence agencies to make invisible anyone bearing a certain pattern in order to protect the intelligence apparatus.

It will always be difficult to sustainably defeat recognition algorithms and I expect this to be an arms race along the same lines as other counter-surveillance techniques.

Gibson's suggestion that deeply coded and secret exceptions to mass surveillance might be used to protect state actors seems to me a plausible and concerning aspect of these developments.