Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Meet the Street Artist Who’s Wanted by the NYPD for Punking the Police with Fake Drone Ads

Via Stu



http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/1805qvvrv85khjpg/original.jpg

His name is 'Essam' and he's a 29-year-old art school grad from Maine, who served in Iraq as a "geo-spatial analyst", and has put up posters like the one above all over New York. It shows drones being used to police regular people in an Orwellian world... with the NYPD logo plastered all over it, as if to endorse it. The NYPD wants him arrested, he wants to let people know the scariness of drones.
Animal New York scored an exclusive interview with the street artist who readily admits that he's not really a part of the street art scene and it's interesting to hear him describe his work. In his talks with Animal:
He agrees that there is an inherent irony in his spoofs: the very fact that the NYPD (which claims to be strongly pursuing him with their "counter terrorism squad") hasn't caught him yet, is proof that we have not reached a state of Orwellian control. "But we're going in that direction and no one's talking about it," he says. "And I think that's pretty scary."
He's already put up over a hundred of these spoof drone ads and he's done them under the very nose of the NYPD and has yet to be caught. Let's hope it stays that way. Be sure to check out Animal's video interview with 'Essam' too (his face is blacked out and his voice is distorted):

More @ Gizmodo

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