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Paranoia is in fashion for wealthy into stealth

Date: January 16 2013

Ryan Gallagher

LONDON: In a move that demonstrates drones, facial recognition technology and mobile phone snooping are starting to affect broader culture, a New York artist, Adam Harvey, has designed a line of high-tech garments made with sophisticated fabrics that can block signals and thwart cameras.

Set to launch this week in London as part of a collaborative project with the fashion designer Johanna Bloomfield, Harvey's line of ''stealth wear'' clothing includes an ''anti-drone hoodie'' that uses metalised material designed to counter thermal imaging used by drones to spot people on the ground.

He has also created a mobile phone pouch made of a special ''signal attenuating fabric''.

The pocket blocks your phone signal so that it can't be tracked or intercepted by devices such as the covert ''Stingray'' tool used by law enforcement agencies such as the FBI.

If that's not enough, Harvey has also made what he calls an ''XX-shirt'', which uses material designed to ''protect your heart from X-ray radiation''.

The 31-year-old artist, who studied mechanical engineering as an undergraduate at Pennsylvania State University, said the increased use of military surveillance technology in civilian environments inspired him to create the line.

''Military technology is coming home from the war,'' he said, referring to the growing use of spy drones across the US.

''These pieces are designed to live with it, to cope with it - to live in a world where surveillance is happening all the time.''

The clothing range, which also includes an ''anti-drone scarf'', is primarily intended to spark a dialogue about the rapid advance of surveillance across society.

While they are pieces of concept art, at the same time they do have a genuine practical use and are being manufactured for public sale.

Harvey has not pinned down exactly what the cost of the garments will be yet, and said they are not likely to be cheap, due to the expensive materials involved.

But it doesn't take a genius to predict activists and other privacy-conscious individuals will be among his first customers. The ''fashionably paranoid market'' is his target demographic, Harvey joked.

The artist's past endeavours have taken a similar stand against the rise of surveillance technologies. A project called ''CV Dazzle'' explored how face-painting and hair-styling could be used to thwart face-recognition cameras.

He is not alone in the anti-snooping field. Last year, the German artist Martin Backes created a counter-surveillance balaclava called ''Pixelhead''. Others have tried using DIY methods such as infrared head torches to frustrate the operators of security cameras.

Fashion might be most commonly associated with models and catwalks - but it is a sign of the times that it can now be about drones and data mining, too.



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