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To Counter Widespread Surveillance, Stealth Clothing
In Paul Theroux's dystopian novel O-Zone, wearing masks in public is simply a fact of life, because of the network of cameras that covers the inhabited parts of earth. Earthquake Retrofit writes with a story at the New York Times describing a life-imitating-art reaction to the perception (and reality) that cameras are watching more of your life than you might prefer: clothing that obscures your electronic presence. "[Adam Harvey] exhibited a number of his stealth-wear designs and prototypes in an art show this year in London. His work includes a series of hoodies and cloaks that use reflective, metallic fabric — like the kind used in protective gear for firefighters — that he has repurposed to reduce a person’s thermal footprint. In theory, this limits one’s visibility to aerial surveillance vehicles employing heat-imaging cameras to track people on the ground. He also developed a purse with extra-bright LEDs that can be activated when someone is taking unwanted pictures; the effect is to reduce an intrusive photograph to a washed-out blur. In addition, he created a guide for hairstyling and makeup application that might keep a camera from recognizing the person beneath the elaborate get-up. The technique is called CV Dazzle — a riff on 'computer vision' and 'dazzle,' a type of camouflage used during World War II to make it hard to detect the size and shape of warships."
Can't quite see it myself.
... and then you'll walk around with a cell phone? You've "chipped" yourself.
In Florida and other states it is illegal to wear masks or otherwise conceal your identity while in public. This may have been a reaction to the KKK during the civil rights period.
That's really going to go over well in August. Heat reflective clothing could be deadly.
Free Martian Whores!
Seems like this would be totally ineffective. All that heat your body is producing has to go somewhere. Its just going to escape from the gaps in coverage left by the clothing design, or just eventually heat up the metal in the clothing to virtually the same as your body temperature. I don't think someone with an IR camera would have a hard time finding you. It may obscure your heat signature a bit, but it will still be very visible.
His ideas seem practical - the IR cloaking and paparazzi-blinding ones, at least. But I think CCTV/Face Recognition is a problem that we should find a legislative solution for.
We, as privacy-loving people, should be able to come up with a convincing argument that the cost of deploying such a network is greater than the benefit.
We could then push to prevent the federation of wider networks (one network per police precinct, for example, so that police can still use them to prevent or prosecute crime, but noone could track movement over a whole city or whole country). Or, allow their use for investigation of crime after the fact, but not active monitoring: systems must be designed in a way that only lets them keep recordings for 48 hours and would not include any network connectivity equipment. If a crime occurs, police can go to the relevant camera and pull the tapes; otherwise, the camera dumbly continuously overwrites.
The surveillance implementations of modern computers are a problem that needs to be addressed in as many was as possible. While legal limits are only as good as the will to enforce them, they are an important way to codify the moral problems created by cheap computers.
As it is my pessimistic side thinks that the only way we'll have proper privacy protection is after a widespread systematic official program of surveillance against some group is revealed, and is proven to cause direct harm to that group's other basic rights and physical security. In other words, we'll only work to limit networked spy technology after it is abused, not before.
Scramble suits.
I assume this is here because they assumed geeks would find it cool to look like a fucking shadow runner, but if you show up wearing that horse shit at a job interview anywhere other than Hot Topic, don't expect a call back.
It is the one person with the bright LEDs or wearing a hoodie on a hot summer day.
Nice try, but law enforcement techniques are always improving too. And that is why they are kept secret to prevent people like this from coming up with countermeasures.
Hahah, covering up your face has been forbidden here for quite a while. Welcome to 1984!
Draw attention to yourself with the most imaginative draft emails you can for your state, county, regions and wait.
Save them with one of the big brand accounts - the ones that have been in the news.
Suddenly take your cell battery out for hours. Save emails to the press as drafts and connect to at cafes in the CBD.
Local Feature Analysis (LFA) will get your face in a country with the population the size of the USA in a very short time.
If the CCTV cant get your face, you will noted and get to enjoy a nice random stop-and-frisk at an exit or park or street.
Welcome to the new world of gait signature if that fails.
http://rt.com/news/identify-walk-system-britain-668/
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
in places like Sili Valley. It'll be the Glassholes chasing after the Tin Hats, and you'll have some of the self-body monitoring crowd in there too.
Just another example of digital technology making our lives better.
Now made fashionable.
Blue jeans, tee shirt, baseball cap, wrap around shades, short beard. You'll look like everyone else.
"Artist imprisoned for helping terrorists"
The sad thing is I'm probably not even joking.
People would seriously blame him if a terrorist used this in some plot to attack somewhere.
And he'd likely be imprisoned too. (for using WMDs probably. and human trafficking or some other nonsense)
When you are invisible, you have to be extra cautious around traffic.
The hoboroadie knows many things, for he walks by night. Mwahahahaha.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Simple rule based policy solutions (if the legal still system functions:)
Abuse of rights severe enough make you immune from conviction. This has been eroding but works quite well.
Proper rules regarding these new powers can curb their abuse. Say they do listen to everything you do; if they are never able to convict you on that evidence (inadmissible, no warrant) then they will still continue to do it but you will be protected to some degree. Obviously, more rules would be needed and no matter what one does you still could draw attention to yourself so then they can fish for something they can legally use against you.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
It will make somebody a bit of money though, because most people are clueless
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
In one of his books there is a special t-shirt that makes the wearer invisible to surveillance cameras.
I'm having one of those quantum leap moments where I distinctly recall having read a topically relevant, in an Arab Spring, Anonymous, sort of way, Theroux travelogue titled, IIRC, "Walking Through Egypt" or somesuch. However, it doesn't seem to be listed on his web site. Curious. Curious, indeed.
"O-Zone" I regard as prophetic, if wildly understated, not "dystopian". Post-apocalyptic, maybe. "Future History" redux.
I don't worry, though. If IGDisneyCocaFarben actually Googles up an actual all-knowing, all-powerful AI God, a real one, not just some sufficiently complex, Turing capable simulacrum, we're at least as likely to end up with Mark Forer as Colossus, Hal9K, or some digital Moloch. Much to the chagrin of Mammon. Or Brother Scudder. For the pious among us, The Almighty has a plan, you see. Do not be decieved by appearances or mere verbiage.
In the meantime, if you don't care for every crook and busybody with the cash to pay, from the ruling elites, to PACS, to the IRS, down to the neighborhood loan shark or used car dealer, having God-like access to every detail about you, your life, your associations, etc., you should keep every option available open to yourself. However goofy or impractical, as the case seems to be here. Might as well carry a sign. "Don't look! Nothing to hide here!"
Follow the bright reflective spot in the crowd
How about an nice fashionable burqa? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burqa)
I see the tin foil hats will be all the craze this fall.
http://bookre.org/reader?file=252744
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_Attraction
Interesting that no-one mentioned anything too practial, either.
In other news, East-Asian gangsters usually wore hats when committing crimes so that "the gods wouldn't see them doing evil deeds". We are, therefore, reaching a mythological level of fantastic reality. And, overtaking it. On overdrive.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think that this is going to be a wonderful addition to our new wardrobe. I call on all fashion designers to get with current tin foil hat makers, and come up with ways to make this popular.
Disclaimer: I myself, am a conceptual tinfoil hat maker. I have everything to gain by this...
FTFA :- "'dazzle,' a type of camouflage used during World War II to make it hard to detect the size and shape of warships."
It was first used in WW1; pink, black, white, and lime green in jagged stripes and patches, together with rigged canvas jagged shapes between the funnels and masts to try to confuse enemy optical rangefinders. Another trick was to paint the profile of a smaller ship on the side of a larger one.
but when I do, I obtain products whose release venue was an art show!
Dear NSA,
This is what you get when you think you know so much more and so much more deeply than Joe and Jane Average and feel like it's your privilege to unilaterally impose on them your secret interpretation of law ....and then they find out.
If you had asked , if you had been forthright and made your case honestly in the court of public opinion, supposing that people were convinced by your reasoning, these kinds of problems wouldn't be burying on you now.
In the event they weren't so convinced, then maybe that's telling you something, like, perhaps you're wrong in a direction and a magnitude that is a function of your unique job stresses.
If you had a little faith in the post -enlightenment, fuck that , the post Magna Carta view that the majority of people people have a right to due process and their understanding of complicated issues deserves to be addressed then the use of encrypted email and encrypted surfing wouldn't be skyrocketing right now, creating logistical and computing headaches even for you.
I have heard Snowden causally called "narcissistic" by commentators on TV who apparently barely grasp what that concept refers to. In fact, if there's a narcissist in the house, I humbly suggest to the individuals within your organization who have gilded themselves in this secrecy and who have sought for and found ways to deceive the American public "for their own good" that those individuals look in the mirror.
Because assuming you are inherently more competent, in fact uniquely and solely competent, to decide how these issues before us ought to be handled (the merely pro-forma, rubber-stamping flotilla of conservative cronies in the FISA court notwithstanding ) is pretty symptomatic of narcissistic personality disorder.
And deciding unilaterally that other people whose lives you effect have no right to know how you might effect them, whose highly personal information you gather and analyze and flag and then , with the blessing of same FISA court peer into are beneath a frank, thorough and truthful discussion of the wheres and hows and whys of same, well, deciding those things unilaterally and being dismissive of input from other sources is pretty symptomatic of narcissistic personality disorder.
And when asked about any of this, stonewalling and lying and attacking the truth tellers amongst us who point out what you're doing- when it comes right down to it, doing outside of the view of democratic process you're sworn to defend - is pretty symptomatic of narcissistic personality disorder.
I used to defend you, but even I am deciding you've erred; you've gone off the tracks at the very least, by attempting to unilaterally force down people's throats that which is necessary, without first making a case for it and worse, believing they could never understand.
You've failed utterly to engage the people whose consent you ultimately need, if not according to your secret interpretation of law, then in fact, in reality.
Whoever told you that to ask for forgiveness is a lot easier than to ask for permission lied to you .There may be no forgiveness in the hearts of people if "trust" is taken as the relevant form forgiveness in this case. Now THAT is serious and long-lasting damage to national security.
And what is all this costing you? And what is that going to cost you going forward? And what is that going to cost us all going forward?
I share your frustration about people. A lot people are reality-denying idiots, and sworn to it to the bitter end. But no democracy can survive acting as though the majority of the public is such.
And we cease to be a democracy when our officials not just mutter that amongst themselves in contempt disgust and frustration, but start to act on it.
Nothing gets you more attention than deliberately trying to hide yourself....
It is illegal to obscure your identity in a public place, because it is illegal to interfere with the investigation of a crime. Since almost all criminal investigations involve looking for a missing suspect, obscuring your identity prevents law enforcement determining whether you are the suspect, and therefore in doing so you are committing Obstruction of Justice.
At least, that will be the government's reasoning in arresting people as "terrorists" who wear masks in public.
The law does allow exceptions for those who are able to prove they have a “lawful excuse” for concealing their face, such as for religious or medical purposes.
How about "it's fucking cold!"?
Who gets to define "unlawful assembly"?
You can by makeup kits to disguise or distort certain features, such as check bones, jaw line, eye color. However it appears they will be using eye scans, and more then likely x-ray/MRI scans to get a full in depth look at your muscle and bone structure. Making impossible to hide who you are, by the way if you think plastic surgery will work, you and your information will go into a data base which alerts the government, or the entire world about your changes.
Of course you could try to find a black market plastic surgeon!!!
He's turned tin foil into clothing now?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Does this clothing have optional RFID tagging or is it mandatory?
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
I've read "To Counter Widespread Surveillance, Steal Clothing". Makes sense: if you enter in a phone booth with eyeglasses, hat and a dress, and you exit with your red underpants over your trousers, nobody will recognize you. If you enter in the phone booth and exit with a cape and a drawing of a stylized bat on the shirt, you'll be sure to totally confuse everybody.
I will sell anyone who'd like a space blanket and a sombrero. I will sign them in Sharpie for just a small surcharge.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5