Adam Harvey/ahprojects.com
“Stealth wear” makes a
countersurveillance fashion statement. Hoodies made of reflective fabric
are intended to reduce one’s thermal footprint.
By JENNA WORTHAM
Published: June 29, 2013/http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/technology/stealth-wear-aims-to-make-a-tech-statement.html?_r=3&
THE term “stealth wear” sounded cool, if a bit extreme, when I first
heard it early this year. It’s a catchy description for clothing and
accessories designed to protect the wearer from detection and
surveillance. I was amused. It seemed like an updated version of a
tinfoil hat, albeit a stylish one.
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Adam Harvey and DIF Magazine
The CV Dazzle hairstyling and makeup program aims to camouflage a person’s face.
Adam Harvey/ahprojects.com
A purse fitted with an electronic device reacts to a
camera’s flash with lights so bright that the subject’s face is
obscured.
Fast-forward a few months. Flying surveillance cameras, also known as
drones, are increasingly in the news. So are advances in
facial-recognition technology. And wearable devices like Google Glass
— which can be used to take photographs and videos and upload them to
the Internet within seconds — are adding to the fervor. Then there are
the disclosures of Edward Snowden, the fugitive former government
contractor, about clandestine government surveillance.
It’s enough to make countersurveillance fashion as timely and pertinent
as any seasonal trend, like midriff tops or wedge sneakers.
Adam Harvey, an artist and design professor at the School of Visual Arts
and an early creator of stealth wear, acknowledges that
countersurveillance clothing sounds like something out of a William
Gibson novel.
“The science-fiction part has become a reality,” he said, “and there’s a growing need for products that offer privacy.”
Mr. 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.
Mr. Harvey isn’t the only one working on such products. The National Institute of Informatics
in Japan has developed a visor outfitted with LEDs whose light isn’t
visible to the wearer — but that would blind some camera sensors and
blur the details of a wearer’s nose and eyes more effectively than a
pair of sunglasses.
And Todd Blatt,
a mechanical engineer in New York, is working on a lens-cap accessory
for people who don’t want to be recorded while talking with someone who
is wearing Google Glass. Instead of asking that the computer glasses be
removed entirely, they could instead hand the wearer the lens covering.
Presto. No taping or photographing would occur during the conversation.
Mr. Harvey likened his work and that of others to the invention of the
rivet in denim jeans. “That was a practical way of making them more
durable,” he said. Stealth wear, he said, is an “updated way of thinking
about making your clothes more resistant to your environment and
adapting them to protect you a little bit more.”
But these designers face a challenge: although technology has inspired
some new fabrics and materials, high-tech fashion of any kind has yet to
really take off.
There simply isn’t much of a market for tech-savvy haute couture, said
Becky Stern, an artist and the director of wearable electronics at Adafruit Industries,
a company in New York that sells do-it-yourself electronics kits. Ms.
Stern noted that a few years ago, clothing embedded with illuminated
lights was relatively popular, but that interest later “kind of fell
off.”
Some of the most exciting experimentation is in the world of sports, she
said, where athletic wear is being developed that can monitor a
player’s vital signs. Such products are commercially viable, she said,
and the technology could eventually migrate to clothing designed
specifically to protect the privacy of its owner.
Jan Chipchase, executive creative director of global insights at Frog Design,
says he sees tremendous potential for an eventual stealth-wear market.
He described current prototypes as “provocations,” saying they raise
“issues that are impacting our cities and public spaces that need more
discussion and debate.”
Mr. Harvey’s items have not yet been thoroughly tested by intelligence
firms or security experts. Most are still concepts, not ready for mass
production. But he said he hoped that awareness of his designs might
“empower you to control your identity a little more.”
AND the mere fact that such designs are attracting attention online
could pave the way for development of a mass market, said Joanne McNeil,
a writer who covers Internet culture.
On her blog “Internet of Dreams,”
Ms. McNeil says that videos and mock-ups of not-yet-developed products,
whether clothing or futuristic smartphones, are often popular online
and may reflect the desires of a populace that larger corporations
haven’t tapped.
“Dreams outpace physical realities,” she said.
In other words, even if stealth wear never becomes a viable or
commercial reality, the newfound intrusiveness it responds to is genuine
enough.
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