Freedom Jeans

Dear Levi Strauss & Co.,

I think it’s really, really great that you’ve developed a line of denim jeans specifically for iPod users. It’s so hard carrying those little music machines around without custom made clothing. Now, I can listen to the latest Wheat album without having to stuff my cumbersome iPod into my breast pocket, which I fear makes it look like I have one boob (not good, since I’m a dude!).

Now that you’re making high tech RedWire DLX jeans, however, I have a suggestion/request for your company: civil rights dungarees. Maybe as part of your tech line, you could manufacture jeans that prevent unwanted wiretapping of the wearer, either by a metallic lining or an alarm near the fly.

Also, it would be useful to have jeans with a metallic-lined pocket to prevent unwanted RFID transmissions from a new U.S. passport, which will soon broadcast unencrypted information that will be readable to anyone with a cheap, commercially available RFID transmitter.

With Wranglers on, terrorists could pick you out at a train station in Europe. But with these newfangled Levi’s I propose, nobody would know the nationality, name or passport number of the wearer. I suggest you call them Levi’s 1776 Jeans. A workplace line could be called “Dockers Blockers.”

Perhaps Levi’s 1776 Jeans could render the wearer invisible to surveillance cameras, or data-miners, or NYC subway bag searchers, or government agents snooping though the wearer’s library records. But these functions will probably require some R&D on you part.

While a fraction of the American population is sufficiently well off to afford an iPod, no American is safe from these intrusions upon our civil rights. And with the “War on Terror” supposedly not ending in our lives, the sales growth potential of Levi’s 1776 Jeans (and Dockers Blockers) seems limitless to me.

Thanks for considering my proposal.

--Redglare