Contest the spreading of biometric surveillance.
Ghostmaxxing is a public research lab for testing face-recognition camouflage in the browser and documenting local experimental results. NINA’s Universal Union coordinates the workshops and confidential reporting through its Ghòstati! initiative.
Use the lab to test camouflage, the archive to find prior work, and NINA’s reporting channel to share evidence of deployments and abuse.
Why Ghostmaxxing?
Face recognition is sold as security and convenience, despite evidence of abuse. Consumer products are making it commonplace.
Face-recognition abuse is a political problem as well as a technical one. Ghostmaxxing develops the free software and documents local experiments. Ghòstati!, part of NINA's Universal Union, organises collective action, workshops and whistleblowing around biometric surveillance.
Who is behind it.
Ghostmaxxing is free software, and all contributions are welcome. Your friendly techno-activist Vecna is maintaining it as part of an attempt to explore how a concept born locally can be global. The project began in spring 2026 for the NINA festival, alongside the initiative Ghòstati ("become a ghost"), which is part of an even more visionary experimental concept called the Universal Digital Union. The first workshop was held with Michelle Tylicki's participation. Michelle had previous experience in adversarial makeup and had hosted the DAZZLE installation.
Ghostmaxxing is now an independent software project. Its development, Fediverse gallery, research references and related projects remain here. NINA and other groups can run their own copy of the browser laboratory.
Workshops and whistleblowing: NINA's Universal Union
Ghòstati! is the name of the political initiative in both Italian and English. It belongs to NINA's Universal Union. NINA organises the workshops and facilitator network and handles whistleblowing reports about real-world face recognition through its separate GlobaLeaks installation.
These confidential reports are separate from the optional clips submitted to the Ghostmaxxing gallery. Gallery submissions go to this software project's server for moderation and possible Fediverse publication; whistleblowing goes to NINA.
Read the workshop guide in Italian or English, and the reporting guidance in Italian or English.
Vision / Goals / Wishes
- Make adversarial makeup a popular practice.
- Make workshops easier to run.
- Test existing clothing, 3D-printed objects, hats and lights.
- Compare camouflage results and how much they change appearance.
- Document weaknesses in deployed face-recognition systems.
How Does Ghostmaxxing Work?
Test camouflage
Try makeup, privacy clothing or another intervention. Share results
so others can retest them.
Every result is local: you share it only if you want
to.
Open the lab
Report deployments
This lab uses open-source components, and it cannot establish performance against deployed systems.
People who build, sell, operate or encounter them can
provide evidence through the reporting channel.
Read the reporting guidance
Share and retest
It's a collective effort to find the least invasive method to break face recognition. A federated content sharing network is the natural environment for pushing and pulling results, inviting replications and learning more.
Follow it there
Challenge surveillance policy
In Europe, real-time remote biometric identification in publicly accessible spaces for law enforcement is treated as a prohibited AI practice, subject to narrow exceptions. The Reclaim Your Face campaign fought for that prohibition, but the surveillance state won. Ghostmaxxing investigates deployments and challenges their normalisation.
Informants wanted! How to safely report?
The reporting node runs on GlobaLeaks, and there is a dedicated questionnaire for each kind of informant.
Read the safety guidance on the reporting page before you write anything. Describe what you saw in your own words rather than uploading originals where you can, and do not continue if doing so would put you at risk.
Fork the code.
- ghostmaxxing (on GitHub)
- Clone and serve the site to run the browser lab locally. See the documentation.