[1][3] The cube is in line with much of Paglen's and Appelbaum's earlier pieces in targeting the field of surveillance and government snooping.

[1] The sculptures consist of 1.25 ft blocks of acrylic Lucite containing Wifi-routers based upon two open source hardware Novena-motherboards.

[4] Any user who connects to the museum open Wifi called Autonomy Cube is directed through the Tor-network for all their activity.

[2][8][9][10][11] The willingness of museums to host these installations was a surprise, says Paglen, who hopes the relays can play a potentially important role in the Tor network.

[4] Omar Kholeif at Whitechapel Gallery has commented on the idea that "when we enter civic institutions we expect them to have Wi-Fi, [and] we just hand over our data", and how the Cubes bring this agreement forth to discussion.