The future of wearable technology, beyond now-standard accessories like smartwatches and fitness trackers, is ePANTS, according to the intelligence community. The Intercept he says:
The federal government has spent at least $22 million in an effort to build "smart" clothes that spy on the wearer and their surroundings. Similar to previous military and intelligence-sponsored Moonshot projects, the inspiration may have come from science fiction and comic book superheroes, but the core applications have a very clear government goal: surveillance and data collection. .
The SMART ePANTS program – Smart Electrical Powered and Networked Textile Systems – described as the “largest single investment in the development of Active Smart Textiles” aims to develop clothing capable of recording audio, video and geolocation data, according to a press release issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on August 22. Garments intended for production include shirts, pants, socks and underwear. All clothing will be allowed to be washed.
The project has been 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.
The IARPA website he says that it "invests federal funding in high-risk, high-reward projects to address the challenges facing the intelligence community."
This risk has led to very impressive achievements, such as the Nobel Prize awarded to physicist David Wineland for his IARPA-funded research in quantum computing, but also to very costly failures.
"A lot of the IARPA and DARPA programs are like throwing spaghetti at the wall," Annie Jacobsen, author of the DARPA book, "The Pentagon's Brain," told The Intercept. "They may stick, they may not."
