Briefly Noted: Privacy Chic

Ever wanted to thwart those increasingly pervasive Big Brother surveillance cameras? Worried that thieves or retail stores (or both!) are using high-tech gadgetry to collect data from your cell phone, iPad, or credit cards while you shop? Consult the Sentient City Survival Kit blog (survival.sentientcity.net/blog) for tips and products aimed at retaining some modicum of privacy and anonymity in the wired age. 

You can don underwear wired to alert you when you're bombarded with radio waves, carry an umbrella embedded with infrared LEDs designed to confuse closed-circuit cameras, or sip from a travel coffee mug that, when combined with similar mugs toted by trusted confederates, can establish your own off-grid Wi-Fi network. 

The blog is an offshoot of Toward the Sentient City, an exhibit by architect and artist Mark Shepard that ran in late 2009 at the Urban Center in New York. The exhibit "critically explored the evolving relationship between ubiquitous computing, architecture and urban space."