That illustration above is law student Asher J. Kohn’s concept of what a fully operational drone-proof city might look like. Rather than building barriers to keep people out and deter weapon strikes like traditional defenses, Kohn’s concept–called Shura City–includes several technologies that obscure people and their movements in order to make them untraceable by UAVs. […]
Hacker/artists Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico take the private information you post online and free the virtual you from the “you” you. Face to Facebook, showing in New York for the first time this month, is a multimedia installation of 1,000,000 appropriated, or “stolen,” Facebook profile pictures matched up simply by facial expression on a custom […]
The British Army has begun using some unbelievably small drones on the front lines in Afghanistan. At just four by two inches, the Black Hornet Nano Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is small enough to fit in the palm of a child’s hand. It’s equipped with what must be an infinitesimally small camera, which soldiers use to […]
Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg GOT YOUR FACE! No, really. Remember that strand of hair you left on in the bathroom stall, that piece of gum you dropped in a bodega, the cigarette butt you chucked on the side of the street? Yoink. With the help of the community biolab at Genspace in Brooklyn, Dewey-Hagborg build a 3D modeling software that analyzing the […]
So you’re out shopping for clothes and you notice that one of the store’s facial recognition-equipped mannequins appears to be spying on you. The Stealth Wear hoodie you just bought will protect you against drones, but is powerless against these bots. What do you do? You pick up a pair of Japanese professor Isao Echizen’s “Privacy […]
When 4chan exposed flaws in certain TRENDnet security systems that allowed hackers to snoop on private camera feeds last year, the whole process felt too wonky to be exploited by your average IRL citizen–unless your neighbor was a /b/tard or redditor, he probably wouldn’t be spying on you. A year later, TRENDnet has issued a […]
It’s hard to say why, but police commissioner Ray Kelly is pretty popular around these parts. So popular, in fact, that despite being the head and public face of a department that’s faced tremendous controversy over stop-and-frisk, seen several cases of police brutality and excessive force, and is considering the use of surveillance drones in […]
Artist Adam Harvey–the guy behind this anti-facial-recognition makeup–is back ,with more practical, surveillance-busting work: Stealth Wear, a line of clothing designed to block thermal imaging, a tracking and surveillance technique often used by drones. According to the artist, Stealth Wear “continues to explore the aesthetics of privacy and the potential for fashion to challenge authoritarian surveillance.” […]
The recent legal blows to the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk tactics may have department brass fearful for the policy’s future, as Police Commissioner Ray Kelly gave a fire-and-brimstone sermon on the dangers of ending the practice at a press conference yesterday. “The things that we’re doing here are working and I would hate to see them […]
