I consider myself a big proponent of personal privacy; it’s very important to me. I’ve written numerous articles on the subject over the years, including an interview with the founder of a secure email service, and an overview of my favorite private messaging app, TextSecure.
Over the last 12 months, I’ve been happy to see people taking personal privacy and online security more seriously. What I take issue with, is fear mongering. I would have classified this article as such, but we don’t have a category for it, so ‘fashion’ will have to suffice.
Stealth Fashion?
In some of my weaker moments, I like to browse Kickstarter. I enjoy supporting small business, and I’ve actually found a cool things on there over the years. When I saw ‘1984’ Collection by THE AFFAIR, I was intrigued… for about 5 seconds.
The fashion industry can be pretty pretentious, I get that… but this campaign takes things to a whole new level.
Here’s their little tagline…
“Big Brother is real and he’s watching. Become untrackable and unhackable with UnPocket™ enabled stealth fashion. #GoDark”
If you’re wondering what they’re talking about, essentially their garments have pockets that act as Faraday cages to block incoming and outgoing transmission. That may sound like a pretty sneaky feature to add, but can you see how that might be a major problem for the wearer? It really kind of defeats the purpose of carrying a phone. But fair enough, let’s continue…
The Video
Here’s the promotional video they’ve put together. I’m not going to say anything, I just want you to watch it. Honestly, I don’t really need to say anything… I suspect you’ll be red-faced with embarrassment after about 30 seconds anyway.
If you’ve had a look at their campaign by now, you probably noticed the big picture of Edward Snowden. It just goes on and on, and I encourage you to explore and cringe at your own pace.
Here are some photos of the actual clothing:
If a person wants to selling clothing with a superfluous amount of snaps, that’s their business. But what drives me crazy is heavy handed scare tactics to try and sell this stuff. That the video is embarrassingly bad doesn’t help either.
But maybe I’ve got it all wrong, maybe they’re doing something valuable. What are your thoughts?
