Today’s Big Story
The Dawn of “Smart” T-Shirts Is Upon Us
Imagine this for a second. It’s the not too distant future and you're getting ready to go outside for a leisurely Saturday afternoon run. It’s April in New York City and the last dark days of winter have finally thawed out. You rummage through your dresser for a pair of workout clothes, only these are a little different. Your shoes and shirt look familiar, adorned in bright pastel colors, and a hefty Nike swoosh, but below the surface, beyond the naked eye, there’s something else hidden in between the tiny industrial polyester weaves.
Hidden in your shirt, your pants, even your compression shorts, are thousands of microscopic sensors. They are all connected to the internet and are constantly tracking data on where you go, who you meet, how you feel, and how your body is handling your run. Conveniently, some of your data is beamed instantly to your smartphone where you see run colorful charts showing you your daily exercise progress. An alert even tells you that you just ran more than your roommate this week!
But you only see a certain amount of that data. Other bits of information, while on the surface unintelligible, are sent to the creators of your garments and their tech partners. That data is then packaged and sold off to third party advertisers who work with researchers to target you with a new ad for … another internet-connected t-shirt.
That world, while seemingly pulled from the pages of some cyberpunk sci-fi novel, has actually been in the works by technologists and marketers for years and now we’re one step closer to watching it turn into reality.
That’s thanks to a new sensor developed by MIT researchers, which they claim can be embedded into, “stretchy fabrics, allowing them to create shirts or other garments that could be used to monitor vital signs such as temperature, respiration, and heart rate.” Researchers claim the new sensors, called E-TeCS, could be used to monitor ill people at home, athletes on the field or, (ambitiously) astronauts in space. The team behind the sensors released a Youtube video detailing their findings which you can watch here.
According to a press release, the sensors consist of long flexible strips that are woven into the fabrics of everyday normal looking polyester blend t-shirts. The researchers had volunteers wear the embedded shirts while working out at the gym. The sensors, spread out along the surface of the shirt, were able to pick data on the wearer’s heart rate, breathing rate, and other vitals and then send that data over to a smartphone.
“We can have any commercially available electronic parts or custom lab-made electronics embedded within the textiles that we wear every day, creating conformable garments,” Canan Dagdeviren, the LG Electronics Career Development Assistant Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, said in a press release. “These are customizable, so we can make garments for anyone who needs to have some physical data from their body like temperature, respiration rate, and so forth.”
While the sensors here are specifically used with medical monitoring in mind, their functionality paves the way for a far more ominous, and more profitable, reality of corporate surveillance. Rather than monitor for vital sings, internet-connected garments of the future could potentially rely on embedded sensors to monitor people’s daily activities, heart rate, productivity, and untold other factors to churn out a new piece of targeted, high specific advertisement.
While this new technology could potentially revolutionize the effectiveness of smart clothing, the foundations for such a marketing makeover have been in the works for some time already. Three years ago, apparel brand Avery Dennison and a London internet of things startup called Evrythng announced a partnership that they said would result in, “10 billion items of clothing connected to the internet.” Avery Dennison, whose clients include Nike, Under Armor, and Hugo Boss, said it would attach labels and sensors to some of the articles of clothing that would serve as unique identifiers. Data about these connected clothes were reportedly stored by Evrythng.
A Quartz article reporting on the partnership highlighted some examples of how these internet-connected wearables could be used in practice. Old shoes, for example, could send an alert when they are worn out and could suggest being recycled, or you could use search the web sit see which store has the exact right size show you are looking for.
“The internet of things is still at the margins in the way it hits consumers’ lives,” Andy Hobsbawm, a co-founder of Evrythng told Quartz in 2016. “Now you have billions of everyday objects with identities in the cloud.”
Some places have even suggested putting RFID sensors into clothes so they cant can monitor how often they’re being worn, and send out alerts to the wearer telling them to put on a certain pair of pants. In this scenario, clothes that go unused for long stretches of time could send out alerts to charities to be donated.
If you want a real-world example of all this, just take a look at Nike’s Adapt running shoes. At first glance, they look similar to most of the company’s other trademark lightweight shoes, covered in spiderweb-like mesh and adorned with a large black swoosh. But near the bottom of the shoes, two bright circular LED lights emit a faint blue glow. Above, where normal cloth laces would zig-zag across the shoe’s tongue, a simple piece of black chord runs across either side, squeezing and loosening depending on the size of the wearer’s foot.
By connecting to the Nike App, the users can adjust the fit of their shoe, the color of the lights, and check their battery life. In exchange, the smart shoes capture every step and other physical information and log it on your app, (and sends that data to Nike and any number of its third-party partners). Eventually, that data will be sold to advertisers who will use target people like your with new internet-connected device to be purchased and siphon even more data. And thus the cycle continues.
While foot tracking and heart rate monition may, on their own, appear harmless, the fervent race towards a large scale internet of clothing future represents one of the most prescient examples of rampant corporate surveillance. In her book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff notes how an internet-connected future filled with wearables is an ideal situation for marketers hoping to profiteer off every day physical behavior. While much of the digital surveillance we currently subject ourselves to occurs on the intangible internet, the holy grail of corporate surveillance seeks to use that monitoring capability to track your behavior in the “natural” world.
Zuboff quotes the physicist R. Stuart MacKay who envisioned a future of “whole populations of connected data emitting individuals.” Wearables, Zuboff points out, are especially valuable for advertisers, because they provide accurate unfettered data on how people react “in the wild” without them ever knowing they are being monitored. While you may have some vague notion of “consenting” to surveillance when you open your laptop or scroll through a Kindle, internet-connected clothing can track you through all of your waking hours when your internal surveillance guard is lowered.
“The aim here, Zuboff writes, “is a grand synthesis: the collation and fusion of every sort of sensor data from every channel and device to develop a ‘virtual sensor environment’ in which ‘crawlers will constantly traverse data...calculating state and estimating other parameters derived from the data’ collected from everywhere from office interiors to entire cities.”
This all has the potential of fundamentally altering the way we interact with devices and how we collectively interpreting the term “surveillance.” Several years ago on the podcast 2038, New York Magazine write David Wallace Wells theorized the implications of such a future.
“But if literally everything about your life, down to your heartbeat, is being sucked up by some corporate entity or government entity it does open up a huge set of questions about surveillance and what gets watched and what gets processed,” Wells said.
That future, where tracking technology is embedded in our clothes, or even under our skin, he argued, is fundamentally different from the way most of society currently interacts with the internet on their devices.
“Right now the internet is everywhere, but our devices are like our little passports into it so we can elect to be participating in the surveillance state that is the internet, but if the internet is everywhere and literally wired into you, there is no opting in and opting out.”
And this reinforces the problems Zuboff highlights throughout her book. By monitoring every aspect of your biology, each successive step towards always-on monitoring further reduces the human into just another meat.
Like what you’ve read so far? If so, please consider becoming a paid subscriber for $5 per month.
If that’s too much commitment, no worries. You can also support the newsletter by making a one-time Venmo donation to @Mack-DeGeurin to help keep this content coming.
In Other News…
***Corona Contact Tracing***
Apple and Google’s Coronviurs Tracking system will not work with apps tracking GPS location. The much-discussed Apple Google project relies on Bluetooth technology rather than GPS to communicate between mobile devices and track carriers of the coronavirus. While this was already known, it was until now unclear how this API would work alongside tracing apps. As you may remember from a previous issue of this newsletter, The Apple Google technology would only work as a tracing method if I was used in tandem with other tracking apps. Now, the two companies have said their tech simply won’t work with apps tracking your GPS.
That choice was made to placate privacy activists who have cautioned against the surveillance capability of GPS location, but the move has garnered criticism from those who say they restriction would potentially make any tracing app ineffective. Here I’m quoting from a Reuters article.
“The Apple-Google decision to not allow GPS data collection with their contact tracing system will require public health authorities that want to access GPS location to rely on what Apple and Google have described as unstable, battery-draining workarounds.”
Since tracking apps and other solutions have come to the forefront, the tug between privacy and effectiveness has remained a contact balancing act. This is yet one more example of just how difficult any effecting tracing app will be.
Stephen Nellis and Paresh Dave, Reuters
***Thank you for Sharing Your Test Results***
Apple and Google have released the first look of their coronavirus racking system.
The display was intended for app developers who may be working with the technology to limit the spread, but screenshots were obtained by the verge. The images in the article show what people could expect to see on thier phone each step of the way as they are asked to acquire obtain and share test results.
***Fears Mount Over India’s Corona Contact Tracing App***
The Indian government released its contact tracing app, called Aarogya Setu (A bridge to health) last month and since then over 75 million Indians have reported voluntarily downloaded it. The app asks people to self reports their symptoms and then, through a mixture of GPS and Bluetooth locaiton data, the app sends out alerts to individuals who may have come in contact with a sick person. Similar to China’s app, Aarogya Setu reportedly issues people green, yellow, or orange badge to signify their risk of infection.
Like many other countries experiment with contact tracing apps, this BuzzFeed article notes how Indian privacy advocates fear the tracing may far outlive the outbreak. Indian officials are reportedly planning on using the app to determine who gets to access, “public transit … government buildings, supermarkets, and pharmacies,” which means makes downloading the app essentially mandatory for anyone hoping to leave their home. And unlike some other countries debating the merits of specific surveillance, India lacks any meaningful federal privacy guidelines, making any reining in of such an app difficult.
***China’s new disinformation campaigns***
China is reportedly using Russia-like disinformation campaigns to try and influence political elections in Taiwan and Hong Kong. By now, everyone is pretty much aware of the techniques used by the Russian state to influence foreign elections in Europe and the United States. Memes, fake Facebook accounts, and state-backed or encouraged trolls work day and night to inflame divisions and sew discord online. While those tacits are usually attributed to Russian actors, other governments are following a similar playbook. Increasingly, that includes China.
A new report released by threat intelligence firm Recorded Future found that Chinese groups reportedly linked to the state amplified and spread fake news meant to sway the outcome of Taiwan’s election. Disinformation was reportedly spread on Weibo, and WeChat, along with Facebook Fan pages. Since Facebook is blocked on mainland China, the government reportedly relied on contractors in Malaysia to carry out the attacks.
***Experts Speak Out Against NHS Tracking***
170 cybersecurity experts have written a joint letter to the British government demanding it to refrain from using its new coronavirus tracking tool for mass surveillance. The letter, which you can read here, comes just a week after over 100 academic experts wrote a similar joint letter warning of potential surveillance missteps associated with the app.
The app in quesitons is being produced by the technology arm of Britain’s National Health Service and would attempt to use precise locaiton tracking to inform people when they had been in contact with a sick person. While many companies have opted to work with Apple, Google and other smaller tech companies to develop similar apps and APIs, the UK rejected that idea and has instead opted to build a product, with less transparency, in house.
Isobel Asher Hamilton, Business Insider
Long Reads/Food For Thought
Cellphone monitoring is spreading with the coronavirus. So is an uneasy tolerance of surveillance.
By Kareem Fahim, Min Joo Kim, and Steve Hendrix for The Washington Post
John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab warned in the article of a silencing of the debate around surveillance in the wake of the pandemic.
“People are anxious. They are worried. They want to go back to normal, to handle doorknobs, to online date. We are looking to anyone who is pitching hope.”
The article also does a good of fleshing out the differences between tracing apps in different parts of the world. South Korea’s app, which has been lauded by some, is especially restrictive to personal liberties.
“Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, an author and journalist who lives in New York, saw how strictly quarantine rules were enforced when she flew to Singapore in late March and was forced to self-isolate in a hotel. Her location was monitored through her cellphone, and twice a day, she was required to verify her whereabouts for the government, occasionally by sending a picture of her surroundings. Once, she got a video call from health officials, just to make sure she was where she said she was.”
The security behind the NHS contact tracing app
Ian Levy for The National Cyber Security Centre
The British government has released a detailed blog on the supposed effectiveness, security and privacy implications of its soon to be released nationwide coronavirus tracing app.
We’re Sleepwalking Into a World of Mass Surveillance
By Seth Lazar for Barron’s
Alright, that's it for now. Have a great weekend.
Thoughts? I want to know what you think! This newsletter is a living, evolving, work and it is meant to be a helpful resource to keep you informed and engaged with the ways emerging technologies are impacting daily life. Please send all comments, questions, corrections, criticism, and hate (lemme have it) to thestateofsurveillance@gmail.com.
If you found this newsletter beneficial, you can help keep it going by sharing it online or (better yet) telling a friend about it. To help support the newsletter in more tangible ways you can make a donation of any amount to my Venmo account below. Any and all support is greatly appreciated.
Follow the State of Surveillance on Twitter @state_of_spies
Follow me on Twitter @mackdegeurin
Support this newsletter with a Venmo donation to @Mack-DeGeurin