SM: When I heard you speak at NEW INC on ways to avoid a digital footprint, it struck me about
how much work it takes to avoid detection. Would you talk a little about the techniques you use? For
example, Tor.
AH: In the past year, I’ve quit most Google services and stopped using Facebook. I’ve upgraded my
browser with extensions like Disconnect, Privacy Badger, and Ghostery. Whenever possible I use iMessages or Signal to communicate with friends instead of email. I always use a VPN to hide my Internet
traffic and IP address. I use Tor occasionally, when more security is needed. I also try to pay in cash
whenever possible to avoid credit card companies form selling my purchase data. Depending on who
you work for, these tactics are considered either suspect or savvy. I would not recommend this digital
detox approach to everyone. It’s expensive and time consuming, but also very educational. To share
some of what I’ve learned and help others improve their privacy, I run a bi-monthly event in NYC
called Privacy Happy Hour, which is a hands-on approach to learning, installing, and celebrating privacy enhancing technology.
SM: Do you ever consider that the effort you make to reduce your footprint makes you look irregular
and more obvious and thus, more visible?
AH: I’ve already crossed that threshold and now fully embrace that I have a red flag somewhere. It
used to bother me more.
SM: One of the things you showed in your NY Times article from 2013 was the idea and images of
a new concept of fashion to avoid detection. While the visual concepts are artistically fascinating,
technology develops so quickly. Two years later, are any of these visual camouflage strategies still
relevant or have you had to invent new ways to beat new tracking systems and their algorithms?
AH: The difficulty of developing camouflage against computer vision is that it has to continuously
adapt to new detection algorithms. The image for the New York Times commission uses a different
strategy than the previous four looks. Earlier, it was possible to use blocky makeup to obscure large
parts of the face. This worked well against OpenCV’s haarcascade detectors, but not as well against
new detection algorithms that use other approaches like local binary patterns or neural networks. I
hope to release an updated technique at some point this year that targets these newer approaches.
However, many commercial face detection applications do still use the haarcascade method and the
original CV Dazzle style is still relevant in some cases.
SM: What are you developing to keep up with the advancing speed of surveillance? How is the race
going between artist and computer?
AH: Right now, my big concern is how Google and Facebook are amassing petabytes of information
from their users and leveraging it to build artificial intelligence. This has a dark potential to combine
the intelligence and insight of every Google or Facebook user into proprietary commercial technology
that could be massively manipulative.
SM: You and I know a world (or at least I do) before mass surveillance. It’s impossible to turn
back the clock. There is a new world reality. One aspect of this was described in the Ideas City
Program sponsored by the New Museum in May. “Everything we do, from messaging our friends
to streaming music to using public transportation, generates information. 90 percent of the data
in the world today has been created in the last two years alone, and its sheer volume means that
a vast proportion of our lives exists as an invisible online record of our identities, interests, and
affiliations.” Pre-Patriot Act privacy no longer exists. What can you say to a person born after
2001 who grew up in our Brave New World? Is there even a definition of privacy, a word that can
only reference the past?
AH: There are at least two ways of defining privacy. The first, from the Cypherpunk manifesto, states
that privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world. The second, by Dr. Helen Nissenbaum, states that privacy is about the appropriate flow of information about people. I like both views
Adam Harvey, Opposite, Top: ’Anti-Drone’ Hijab, 2013; Bottom: ’Anti-Drone’ Hoodie, 2013.
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