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June 21, 2013 Andy Cush

Not to be outdone by the NSA and the GHCQ, the NYPD is unveiling some scary spying equipment of its own. The Domain Awareness System, a program rolled out last year that compiles information from every NYPD surveillance camera, license plate reader, and radiation detector in the city, will soon be made available for every cop […]

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Kyle Chayka

This typeface was designed specifically to be unreadable by most automated text scanning software. The disruptive typeface ZXX takes its name directly from the Library of Congress’ listing of three-letter codes meant to specify what language a text is written in. The code “ZXX” is used to denote when there is no information that can be found from within the text. […]

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June 19, 2013 Andy Cush

/\/\ /\ Y /\, M.I.A.’s third album, looked almost like a career-killer when it was released in 2010. A New York Times Magazine profile released at the time singlehandedly turned public opinion against M.I.A., and the album’s noisy, industrial-influenced sound threatened to topple the the precarious balance between pop and provocation she had maintained on her first […]

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Andy Cush

On June 5, the Guardian published a report based on a leak from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, detailing how the NSA surveils U.S. phone calls, collecting and analyzing cell phone metadata from Verizon. The following day, the Washington Post revealed PRSIM, a program that allowed the NSA to monitor electronic communications like […]

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June 14, 2013 Aymann Ismail

The NSA is listening, PRISM is ruining the internet and surveillance cameras are everywhere. Bummer. Well, we might as well have a little fun. Here’s our fashion spread, as shot through NY subway surveillance monitors. It was fun until an MTA worker — not a cop — asked me, “You know, we can arrest you for […]

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Marina Galperina

If you didn’t get to troll the NSA yet, don’t worry. In response to the troubling exposure of the PRISM internet surveillance program — and the general public’s vast response of WHAT THE FUCK, R U SRS? — here’s a brand new project from Carlos Sáez (of Cloque.Org) and Anthony Antonellis (of NetArtNet.Net) for fun. TriggerTreat.net generates a seemingly endless list […]

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June 5, 2013 Andy Cush

As drones, CCTV cameras, and various other surveillance technologies continue to proliferate in New York City and around the world, one city has taken it a definitive, if temporary, stance against the eyes in the sky: Iowa City, Iowa. City Council voted unanimously to approve the first reading of a bill that would outlaw drones, traffic […]

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June 3, 2013 Aymann Ismail

London is notorious for its network of CCTV cameras. The surveillance efforts are ubiquitous, Orwellian and frighteningly advanced: Authorities can watch and track people, from camera to camera, all over the city. While New York City is moving in the same direction, at least in London a menagerie of signs has been deployed to remind the […]

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May 8, 2013 Andy Cush

All over the city, little white boxes have been popping up, affixed to traffic light poles at busy intersections. Their purpose: to observe and collect data from the E-ZPass devices in the cars driving by below. And despite attempts by the Brooklyn Paper to gather more information about the boxes, the city has kept tight-lipped. Spokespeople for […]

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April 29, 2013 Andy Cush

You’ve heard of facial recognition, that old classic of the dystopian surveillance state. But what about racial recognition, a system that would instantly let authorities know whether or not that guy creeping around the premises of a national landmark is terrorist-colored or not? According to a report from Slate, that exciting new technology may be headed to […]

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