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NSA Document T-Shirts Let You Wear State Secrets on Your Sleeve

The Big Data Pawn Shop is an online superstore of kitschy knick knacks decorated with leaked NSA documents.
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When Edward Snowden leaked a treasure trove of classified NSA documents to the media in 2013, he may have expected outrage and radical political change, but he probably didn't expect that the fruits of his labors would one day wind up on a doggie vest on the internet, for sale for about $20.

It's all thanks to Sam Lavigne, the art hacker responsible for the procedurally-generated supercut program Videogrep, and his collaborators Surya Mattu and Adam Harvey. Their project is the Big Data Pawn Shop, an online store which offers knick-knacks like t-shirts, trucker hats, iPad cases, and even doggie vests decorated with leaked official documents, including codenames COTTONMOUTH, CANDYGRAM and IRONCHEF. While the highly amusing NSA kitsch-tastrophe were only on sale through December 2015, we're sure they made perfect gifts for ensuring arguments about the politics of privacy at Christmas.

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Check out a few examples from the Big Data Pawn Shop's catalogue below.

Check out Lavigne's site here to find more of his tongue-in-cheek art projects.

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