In these high-tech times, it's really hard to maintain privacy, even for the most private persons. We leave trails of things we do, DNA in hair that fell off, electronic cookies that track our browsing habits, Facebook postings telling others who we are, where we've been, and who we are going it. Apart from those, we don't know what Google knows about us, and I believe they know more than what others know about us. Our phones betray our locations and a lot of  mobile phone apps want to know our location.

There's really no escape from all of these unless we self-exile ourselves to the South Pole or some god forsaken place where nobody knows what a phone looks like.

Then there's another component that's growing in use in our heavily tracked lives -- drones.

More known as those military drones used for recon and intelligence gathering, they have also taken in more deadly role as some of these drones carry with them missiles so they can immediately interdict and destroy a target when given the command coming from thousands of miles away. In civilian life, drones are getting into the action, from those action drones covering sports events (which includes airsoft), to journalists using them to give a more eye bird coverage as compared to hiring choppers, and for police for surveillance , anti-crime, and anti-civil disturbance purposes. Even activists bring with them their down drones to conduct their own counter-surveillance.

While we can spoof digital surveillance by a number of anonymizers, cookie killers, proxy servers, virtual private network services, and IP spoofing, spoofing drone surveillance is another thing, and you will need to employ what militaries have been using to  be stealth such as IR treatment of clothing and gear which we also use for airsoft games. But in case you want your privacy whilst walking on the streets then counter-surveillance fashion is the thing you might want to look into.

I've read about this in some website last January, but dismissed it rather as something that might not catch on. But with more websites and credible news organisations writing about it, then it's something worth a look and the person behind this counter-surveillance fashion is dead set about creating the clothing and accessories to be stealthy these days. His name is Artist Harvey, and he's the guy behind the CamoFlash which is known as the anti-paparazzi tool since it flashes back obscuring the image captured by the camera when a flash gets detected.

He has a created a line of counter-surveillance clothing and accessories he calls Stealth Wear that we just hope can be presented in a way that for those who will be wearing it won't look like having tin-foil hats when walking around.  One is the anti-drone garments to counter thermal imaging used by drones, and an example is the Hoodie, as shown below, but there are other designs that can be used depending on your requirement.

Sounds like Harry Potter's invisibility cloak? Well, not really as this just hides you from imaging technologies but enough to avoid the drones.

However, there are some concerns about the use of such counter-surveillance fashion as it may be used by criminals or unsavory characters who are up to no good. But then there have been tools designed to counter such as police radio scanners,  and IR-treated camo that are out there in the market. And if you don't want your phone to be tracked, then you just need to turn it off.

It's an interesting area as far as I am concerned, especially when we talk about privacy. The garments could be handy when they can be easily carried around in compact form, ready to be worn when needed.

As for Harry Potter's invisibility cloak, it's still a long way coming.