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United States

US Spy Agency Dreams of Surveillance Underwear (theintercept.com) 82

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
The future of wearable technology, beyond now-standard accessories like smartwatches and fitness tracking rings, is ePANTS, according to the intelligence community. The Intercept: The federal government has shelled out at least $22 million in an effort to develop "smart" clothing that spies on the wearer and its surroundings. Similar to previous moonshot projects funded by military and intelligence agencies, the inspiration may have come from science fiction and superpowers, but the basic applications are on brand for the government: surveillance and data collection. Billed as the "largest single investment to develop Active Smart Textiles," the SMART ePANTS -- Smart Electrically Powered and Networked Textile Systems -- program aims to develop clothing capable of recording audio, video, and geolocation data, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced in an August 22 press release. Garments slated for production include shirts, pants, socks, and underwear, all of which are intended to be washable.

The project is being undertaken by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, the intelligence community's secretive counterpart to the military's better-known Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. IARPA's website says it "invests federal funding into high-risk, high reward projects to address challenges facing the intelligence community." Its tolerance for risk has led to both impressive achievements, like a Nobel Prize awarded to physicist David Wineland for his research on quantum computing funded by IARPA, as well as costly failures. "A lot of the IARPA and DARPA programs are like throwing spaghetti against the refrigerator," Annie Jacobsen, author of a book about DARPA, "The Pentagon's Brain," told The Intercept. "It may or may not stick."
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US Spy Agency Dreams of Surveillance Underwear More

US Spy Agency Dreams of Surveillance Underwear

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  • Gives new meaning to "G-String" (Score:5, Funny)

    by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Monday September 04, 2023 @05:05PM (#63823332)

    Also "underwire".

  • A conspiracy to... (Score:5, Funny)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Monday September 04, 2023 @05:19PM (#63823372)
    "Hey Bob, you know what would really mess with paranoid schizophrenics?"
    And then the rest is history

    • Forget the schizos, think of all the nutjobs who said covid vaccines would be injecting you with a tracking device.

      • Great, so clothing stores will be targets for firebombs because the conspirdos are accusing them of "working with the gov't spooks to spy on all of us." Feel free to dream up additional 'supporting' content involving the Illuminati, lizard men, space aliens, men wearing red pajamas, etc...

        • Great, so clothing stores will be targets for firebombs because the conspirdos are accusing them of "working with the gov't spooks to spy on all of us." Feel free to dream up additional 'supporting' content involving the Illuminati, lizard men, space aliens, men wearing red pajamas, etc...

          In some cities in the USA they already are. And not a social worker in sight that is willing to talk these crazies down from their 'episode'.

          • Because in the USA, mental health is not taken very seriously and the rich politicians have enough gold to ensure that they are not attacked with the firebombs. So who cares if some crazy has been loudly accusing the local (lets say coffee shop) of being an undercover government operation percecuting him, and he's been threatening to kill the employees and burn the shop down for weeks. As long as politician Johnny Rich's mansion is off the guy's shit list there is nothing to worry about. And when the shop d
          • "In some cities in the USA they already are. And not a social worker in sight that is willing to talk these crazies down from their 'episode'." Because they are too busy patting each other on the back at expensive luncheons, and shit grinning infront of Hollywood style repeated pattern backdrops with their fancy .org logo all over it telling the press that they are "doing something". Then they drive home in their big luxury SUVs to their nice expensive homes, thanks to their nice generous salaries from be
            • To be fair, not all social workers are like this, and many really are busting their asses off trying to solve a problem far larger than they, with very few personell to help them do the job, and they themselves are almost homeless themselves. But too many others are nothing more than empty peacocks trying to make themselves look real good in front of the media, and they treat their .org as their very own social club/cash cow.

    • That would explain why they're mouthing off about it.

      If the TLAs are actually doing this, they should STFU.

    • It looks like someone fell in love with the word "smartypants" and the thing took off on its own. There may be something practical beneath it but the silly forced acronym isn't helping any..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bob_Who ( 926234 )

      "Hey Bob, you know what would really mess with paranoid schizophrenics?"

      You must be tapping my phone, I don't wear any pants at all.

    • When Moscow put novichok on Navalny's underpants and how he got on the phone with the guy who did it kudos bellingcat is really hard to beat in terms of crazy spy shit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • I Would Love To Fart In It. (Score:3)

    by zenlessyank ( 748553 ) on Monday September 04, 2023 @05:22PM (#63823392)

    Spy on that.

  • I would invest in smarty-pants.

  • The smart underwear can spy on Towelie and get him busted.

  • If you want an agent or asset to have covert surveillance ability, we can already build some pretty decent stuff into a belt, but other than that people are going to notice the battery pack if nothing else.

    What you really want to do it is plant RFID tags in your target's clothing, and then hide antennas near doorways of their most commonly frequented places. But a covert camera across the street with facial recognition software is probably still a better idea.

    • What you are suggesting is relatively low-tech by agency standards and would be detectable by a scan. Through wall/building/roof surveillance exists. Micro passive cameras embedded in drywall (or wherever) are in extensive use for even domestic surveillance of non-investigative subjects. I imagine that the devices in question are passively powered by electricity generated from either movement or body heat.

      • Through-wall technology does indeed exist. And so does terahertz imaging, which goes through clothing fairly easily. We can also embed passive devices in walls, but they're useless for more than focusing existing radio waves.

        What you're not going to do though, is beat the inverse square law. Not only do the electronics take power to run, but the radio signal they use to deliver the information they collect needs enough power to get a viable signal to your receiver.

        If you want that signal to go more than

    • If you want an agent or asset to have covert surveillance ability, we can already build some pretty decent stuff into a belt, but other than that people are going to notice the battery pack if nothing else.

      What you really want to do it is plant RFID tags in your target's clothing, and then hide antennas near doorways of their most commonly frequented places. But a covert camera across the street with facial recognition software is probably still a better idea.

      Edible RFID tags in fast food and tracking around the high streets and malls.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Entrope ( 68843 )

        Edible RFID tags in fast food and tracking around the high streets and malls.

        Edible RFID tags in cheese wheels [slashdot.org]. With blockchain, natch.

        • Edible RFID tags in fast food and tracking around the high streets and malls.

          Edible RFID tags in cheese wheels [slashdot.org]. With blockchain, natch.

          Hmmm cheeseburger... poutine...

  • At long last, I can find out the answer by requesting the surveillance data.

  • Wear a dress.

  • Don't scan my balls.

  • ... Powered and Networked Textile Systems ...

    This is the equivalent to the UK putting a surveillance camera in every child's bedroom: Their privacy is protected by an absence of privacy. It's the same idea as police drones at outdoor parties: The police fishing for petty crimes by invading a de facto privacy, which these days rarely exists because someone will publish your private moment to Youtube/X [Twitter]/Facebook.

    This is the FBI's wet dream: Your clothes are the interfering busybody and snitch. The point isn't spying on drug-dealers and '

    • ..which these days rarely exists because someone will publish your private moment to Youtube/X [Twitter]/Facebook.

      Maybe one day people will start inviting friends to parties again instead of attention whores.

  • in the spying community.
    They are secretly testing them out in the chess and poker community with great success.

    • in the spying community. They are secretly testing them out in the chess and poker community with great success.

      The spying community? That's who went all in funding Neimanns lawsuit?

      Not sure how successful it was. After all, he backed out and settled...

  • get smart (Score:3)

    by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Monday September 04, 2023 @06:51PM (#63823618)
    Maxwell wants his shoe phone back
  • We are going into massive government debt to fund these useless projects. Can't wait until we default on the debt and we can so funding this nonsense
  • I always dreamed of a 5 gigabit ballsack. Thank you, TLAs for making my dreams come true.

  • A bold move, a value judgement and a product name in one.

  • They just busted an NSA guy with 16M dicpics on his home computer.

    Story checks out.

  • The least I could do is send the NSA, CIA, FBI, NIS, etc a picture of my dick for all the courtesy theyve shown us by wasting tax dollars and illegally spying on us.
  • And you thought they were just for fun....

  • would love it even more.

  • Sir the subject is aroused. I repeat the subject is aroused. How do you want me to proceed?
  • This has got to be an OOS April Fools joke. First order of business: throw the underpants into the microwave for 5-10 seconds. I doubt these underpants are rad hardened to survive this. This would more likely snag some old 'enemy' agent who thinks the CD-ROM tray of his aging home computer is the 'cup holder', and is not important enough or holds good enough info to have bodyguards around him that know to look for bugs wherever they might be. "Awesome! The old geezer told us where his escaped Nazi buddie

  • Generate a log (Score:3)

    by dotslashdot ( 694478 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @02:51AM (#63824288)
    After consuming information, the spy pants get full, and they generate a log.

  • Can't wait for the new remake of "The Wire" TV-series; "The ePants".

  • In related news, the original poster's calendar was still set to 2023/04/01.

  • ...when I start receiving free cases of Beano from some anonymous benefactor.

  • The Mormons have had to wear "magic underwear" [wikipedia.org] with a hotline to their god ("ohhh Brother Samuel, I can see you're thinking about Brother Saul. Again!" [thunder_bolt.GIF]) since the 1840s, so I guess they're the lead designers on this. Their GTP (God Transmission Protocol) communications can dispose of all those awkward "electron" things. And you always know that the technology comes from Chosen People, so you don't need to have any of those "security" things.

    Ultimate underwear oversight.

  • I guess in the near future a lot of new clothing will first be taken to a tailor who will remove any metal zippers, buttons, etc. Then the garments will spend some time in a microwave oven. I suspect that would disable the spytronics.

    Alternatively, I foresee small EMP generators specifically designed to destroy the spytronics and leave the clothing intact. Or the clothes could be spun rapidly in a strong magnetic field, such as the bore of an MRI machine. The induced current would probably fry some electron

  • Shop SMART, shop S-MART!
  • The ability to detect what you ate by the chemical makeup of your farts.

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