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Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

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Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#51

Post by mamon »

imgabe wrote: post #45
jstanley wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A "smart", unnecessarily Internet-connected kettle or lightbulb or juicer isn't going to usher the second coming of fascism to the Western world. Each individual one isn't, but in aggregate they start transferring more and more control over your daily activities to faceless corporations thousands of miles away. That is dystopian.

In what way is control of your daily activities transferred away by a smart kettle? Is it not going to boil the water when I want to boil the water? If it doesn't, I'll throw it away and get a regular kettle. That's pretty much the only daily activity my kettle is involved in and no amount of Internet connection is going to remove my control of it.

But what if smart kettles would became so popular that regular kettles would not be produced anymore? How would you replace it then? Or, more importantly: how about "smart" lightbulbs, door locks, refridgerators? Those are much harder to replace.

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#52

Post by rout39574 »

imgabe wrote: post #45
jstanley wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A "smart", unnecessarily Internet-connected kettle or lightbulb or juicer isn't going to usher the second coming of fascism to the Western world. Each individual one isn't, but in aggregate they start transferring more and more control over your daily activities to faceless corporations thousands of miles away. That is dystopian.

In what way is control of your daily activities transferred away by a smart kettle? Is it not going to boil the water when I want to boil the water? If it doesn't, I'll throw it away and get a regular kettle. That's pretty much the only daily activity my kettle is involved in and no amount of Internet connection is going to remove my control of it.

Consider that many appliances might be equipped with such data feeds. Consider that it might be time consuming or impossible to find a device without them.

If your kettle is deemed an interesting part of the national power infrastructure, it might even become legally mandated. I've read stories that suggest the UK power authorities watch carefully when... Dancing with the stars? finishes, because 15 seconds later, 20% of the nation puts the kettle on. It has already been suggested that "smart" thermostats might be a nice requirement, so the power company mothership can (Voluntarily, of course! initially...) reset your temperature to shape load.

If your kettle and your fridge and your thermostat and your toilet and your alarm clock and your television and your front door and your car and your vacuum and your..... are all chirping little pixels of your life picture to the mothership, you are surveiled to a degree beyond the erotic dreams of the Stasi.

Further: this bleak picture presumes that all of these little fomites are well implemented. In point of fact, many of them are wide open gateways to black hats.

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#53

Post by Aleroniponi »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #19
userbinator wrote: post #10

It seems almost a given that whenever the term "smart" is applied to anything, it's something that tries to monitor, monetise, or otherwise resist your attempts at controlling it --- instead, it attempts to control you . There's enough dystopian science fiction out there that the only thing I think when I hear "smart" is "No thanks."

Regarding "smart devices" and IoT, honestly, I don't qualify it as dystopian . To me, it's just pathetic . A "smart", unnecessarily Internet-connected kettle or lightbulb or juicer isn't going to usher the second coming of fascism to the Western world. Even data breaches connected to those devices aren't going to have any meaningful impact on an average person's life. But it's sad, because it's wasteful. It's ugly. I…

> that gets attached to my butt

Wait a minute, I don't have that extension installed at work...

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#54

Post by TeMPOraL »

Aleroniponi wrote: post #53
TeMPOraL wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding "smart devices" and IoT, honestly, I don't qualify it as dystopian . To me, it's just pathetic . A "smart", unnecessarily Internet-connected kettle or lightbulb or juicer isn't going to usher the second coming of fascism to the Western world. Even data breaches connected to those devices aren't going to have any meaningful impact on an average person's life. But it's sad, because it's wasteful. It's ugly. I…

> that gets attached to my butt Wait a minute, I don't have that extension installed at work...

I have it installed on all desktop machines and had it for so long now, that I keep forgetting about it. Must have edited the post, that's usually how it sneaks into comments ;).

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#55

Post by SEJeff »

reaperducer wrote: post #46
SEJeff wrote: post #20

When it comes to "Smart Cities" in the US at least, Chicago is leading the pack: http://arrayofthings.github.io/

Chicago keeps trying to be super-technology-world, but it doesn't always work. More than a decade ago, Google promised to bring free wi-fi to the entire city. The idea was to put an AP on every light pole. Lots of press. Lots of TV interviews. No internet. It never occurred to Google that when the light on a light pole goes off, the power to the entire pole is turned off. And not just that pole, but every other pole…

Great example of failing, but this one isn't. I was worried tbh when I saw the detector go up in my neighborhood (the pole detectors used to only be gunshot mics in high crime neighborhoods, which mine is not!). I did some inquiring and realized it is a university project to make the city better via anonymous data. The idea is absolutely fantastic. What they ultimately do with said data is how we see if this experiment fails or not. So far, it seems to be pretty useful.

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#56

Post by joncrane »

donarb wrote: post #38
Animats wrote: post #35

I wonder what Apple would do if you leased some rooftop space in the mall across the street from the entrance to their new HQ and aimed cameras at the entrance, recording every license plate going in and out? Then buy the CA DMV records, which you can do for marketing purposes, and use that to build an employee list to be sold to recruiters.

How would you correlate an Apple employee's job title with a recruiter's requirements using just a license plate number?

Year, make, and model of the car would be a good proxy. If not for job title, then for propensity to spend on luxury items.

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#58

Post by Animats »

joncrane wrote: post #56
donarb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you correlate an Apple employee's job title with a recruiter's requirements using just a license plate number?

Year, make, and model of the car would be a good proxy. If not for job title, then for propensity to spend on luxury items.

Once you have license numbers, you can get names. Once you have names, you can look at LinkedIn, Facebook, and CiteSeeer to see what they're into.

You can also gather intelligence on what Apple is working on. More AI people? More voice recognition people? More chip designers? More phone sales people?

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#59

Post by corny »

shyn3 wrote: post #17

The public should provide a fair exchange here. Allow Sidewalk Labs to build any infrastructure they like irrespective of laws. Once done, hire whitehats/blackhats, and if they are able to access any information, shutdown the project.

A fairer exchange would be that all data collected be made public at the most granular level. If there are concerns that it could be abused or is an invasion of privacy, then they're collecting too much.

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#60

Post by KozmoNau7 »

rout39574 wrote: post #52
imgabe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is control of your daily activities transferred away by a smart kettle? Is it not going to boil the water when I want to boil the water? If it doesn't, I'll throw it away and get a regular kettle. That's pretty much the only daily activity my kettle is involved in and no amount of Internet connection is going to remove my control of it.

Consider that many appliances might be equipped with such data feeds. Consider that it might be time consuming or impossible to find a device without them. If your kettle is deemed an interesting part of the national power infrastructure, it might even become legally mandated. I've read stories that suggest the UK power authorities watch carefully when... Dancing with the stars? finishes, because 15 seconds later, 20…

Defcon has had a bunch of extremely interesting talks since IoT became a buzzphrase. Not that they were boring before, but the sheer scale of incompetence on behalf of the IoT manufacturers is astounding.
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