Project Seen identifies and redacts any NSA trigger words in real time

Ever feel that the government might be spying on you from weird angles? We're seeing more and more evidence to suggest the things we do and say are no longer ours, but there to be viewed as potential evidence or data to be sold, particularly online. Central Saint Martins design graduate Emil Kozole has taken this thought and designed a font that alerts people if their words might attract the attention of the US National Security Agency.

“Seen is an experiment in evasive and reflexive techniques around the topic of online privacy,” explains Kozole. “This system highlights where you are prone to being surveilled whilst also preventing you from potentially being tracked.” Using ligatures, the font – which is available to download for free from the website – is able to pick up any of these trigger words as they’re being typed. As it can be used in all the usual places – web browsers, Word, InDesign etc – it’s able to alert you to anything the NSA or GCHQ might actually see.  

Project Seen works using a list of ‘spook’ words used by the NSA’s clandestine surveillance programme PRISM, whose existence was originally leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013, and identifies them within the text by redacting them. The more of these words occur, the more likely you are to be flagged as a terrorist – which is easier than you might think. Alongside all the expected terms such as ‘AK47’ and ‘hostages’ are the less obvious ‘Internet’, ‘nerd’ and ‘friday’.

With increased awareness of the way our online data can be exploited, products are becoming smarter. Turing's unhackable phone and the Cuckoo encryption device aim to protect our messages from prying eyes, while Google Ideas is helping keep new Internet users safe.