In the same way that Kim Kardashian transcended being a single woman and became the very air we breathe—and so gradually it was hard to notice—the NSA took to monitoring everything you say or send without anyone really catching on until it was too late.
At the risk of comparing the post-9/11 security state to a sex tape-perfume line-reality show celebrity portfolio, there was the initial event and then the momentum took over, and now, this is our reality—if only for now.
Videos by VICE
Finally, one hand is going to wash the other. An art and computer science student at Carnegie Mellon named Maddy Varner has cracked the code of making codes: smuggle your secret messages across the web by hiding them in pictures of Kim Kardashian.
Kardashian Krypt in action. Screenshot: the author
“Kim’s image is everywhere. You think of selfies and you think of Kim Kardashian,” Varner told me over the phone. “She’s the number one most followed woman on Instagram. Her image is already in the back of everyone’s mind, whether you want her to be or not. So the fact that her image is everywhere makes it easier to slip in a few secret messages.”
That’s exactly what Varner’s Chrome extension Kardashian Krypt, which was developed as part of her internship at FAT Lab, allows you to do. The steganographic extension (Varner’s code is available on GitHub) allows users to easily hide data within an image file—in this case, exclusively pictures of Kim.
Just type in your message, convert it into a .png of Kim, and send it off to your friend/Glenn Greenwald. Want to try it out for yourself? Here, I made a message just for you. Just save this image and upload it to Kardashian Krypt:
Anyone poking around your inbox will think you’re just a couple of “Keeping Up…” junkies, getting that fix. I mean, what’s someone going to think if they see this image in my inbox?
Screenshot: the Author
Actually, I mean, what will they think?
There’s something pretty ironic about defending your personal privacy through images of someone who embodies the opposite of that, but maybe Kim functions to remind you of either the pain of everyone wanting to know what you’re doing and saying, or maybe the vanity of assuming they do. The more I mull it over, the more Kim becomes an enigma. No matter your thoughts on her, she’s now indisputably a cypher.
Kim’s Wikipedia page. Screenshot: the author
Varner is an old pro at this, having worked with FAT Lab to Kanyefy Your Dock. She also told me about another Chrome extension called Tab Release that randomly decides to close all your tabs sometimes, presumably in order to induce violence towards computers, or perhaps a decluttered mind.
Maybe Kardashian Enkryption is some sort of answer. It’d be nice if that’s all it took. Is the idea of “Kim Kardashian” elastic enough to use her as shorthand for liberty?
It’s silly, but the dream remains: maybe the NSA’s constant, ubiquitous monitoring could someday be an ugly episode that we can safely forget, like Kim’s musical career.
