In the article, The Right to Hide? Anti-Surveillance Camouflage and the Aestheticization of Resistance Torin Monahan describes artistic products that have been created to conceal individuals from surveillance. These artistic designs, known as anti-surveillance camouflage, include hairstyles, face paint, masks, and clothing. First, he presents the CV Dazzle project, which aims to confuse face recognition systems with hairstyles and face paint. The design of the hairstyle and face paint appropriates navy camouflage used in the World Wars to distort enemy weapons. The next example of anti-surveillance camouflage brought up by Monahan is Leo Selvaggio’s Resin mask design of the URME project, which includes software that will automatically edit videos to replace the persons face with his. Last, Monahan describes the Noisebridge Anti-Surveillance Fashion Show, which showcased various mock serious designs such as belts that scan nearby networks for information. The fashion show went on to showcase designs concerned with violence against women such as the “Rear Window Shade” which allows the wearer to see who is sneaking up behind them.
Monahan ultimately argues that, anti-surveillance camouflage is does not qualify as countervisuality, which can be defined as asserting a collective challenge to the state surveillance structure while acknowledging the discriminatory and oppressive tendencies of it. He goes on to establish the designs as a form of aestheticization of resistance because they generate media attention and scholarly interest without challenging the actual issue, which is the magnitude and discriminatory tendencies of surveillance in society. These camouflage strategies are hyper- individualized and consumer oriented because they claim the solution is a personal product as opposed to a correction to the actual system. Instead of confronting the problem of state surveillance, these anti-surveillance camouflage tactics are hiding from it. They may even make the problem worse. For instance, CV Dazzle preserves structural inequalities by drawing attention away from the issue of racialization of biometric systems. Also, the items in Noisebridge Anti-Surveillance Fashion Show normalize exposure to surveillance and violence against women. Not only that but it depicts the individual responsible for avoiding attackers instead of questioning the culture or structure that produces these attackers. Anti-surveillance camouflage claims the “right to hide”, when the real issue at hand is the right to privacy.