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Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

forbes.com

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Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#11

Post by rdl »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #8

My hope is that this is another push toward on-prem data management. One of the things that the "computer revolution" spawned in the 90's was that there were a lot of "extra" computers around because everyone upgraded every 18 - 24 months. After a couple of rounds of upgrades, if you had kept the old parts, you had enough parts around to make another computer. In my house this typically became the "kids" computer and…

It would be fine if keys were held locally or in a loyal-to-end-user way, and data stored dumbly in the cloud. This would break business models fundamentally and also require a lot of technical rearchitecting, though. (Ideally you'd be able to delegate/release a short-lived key to a subset of data to do certain operations remotely, on to-some-extent-loyal remote computing resources, but I think within 5 years people will realize that long-term/eternal data at rest under anyone else's control makes you a victim-in-waiting.

Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#12

Post by wstrange »

yardie wrote: post #6

If your data is not end to end private key encrypted, then you are inviting the government in to look at all your shit; photos, documents, logs, everything.

We tend to view this as a technology problem.

The real question: Why do we let governments get away with this kind of behavior?

Fighting a technology arms race with the government is a losing battle. They can ask for private keys to be handed over - on threat of jail time if you don't comply.

We need to start at the ballot box.

Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#13

Post by rdl »

Sharlin wrote: post #5

I think the time has come for a The Wire reboot. Anyone else? Edit: Downvotes, why? The Wire was a critically acclaimed series whose major themes included abuse of power, the use of technology to both surveil and evade surveillance, perverse incentives, and failure of institutions, among other things that are as relevant as ever in the post-Snowden era. But instead of pagers and burners we'd get tech circa 2018.

A series where people used technical surveillance using devices like these (IOTINT? IDK what the term of art is yet), OSINT from online things like FB, various forms of legal process (civil, LE, NS, and extralegal), etc. to go after "terrorists" down to criminals of various crimes down to "enemies of the Party" down to "people who slightly antagonize employees of the Agency" to "for the lulz" would be interesting.

More like Homeland than The Wire, though. Or, uh, Black Mirror.

Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#14

Post by brian_herman__ »

oulipo wrote: post #10
ChuckMcM wrote: post #8

My hope is that this is another push toward on-prem data management. One of the things that the "computer revolution" spawned in the 90's was that there were a lot of "extra" computers around because everyone upgraded every 18 - 24 months. After a couple of rounds of upgrades, if you had kept the old parts, you had enough parts around to make another computer. In my house this typically became the "kids" computer and…

This is exactly why we are building on-device private AI at Snips ( https://snips.ai , disclaimer: I'm a co-founder) We believe that the only way to have people trust AI is when we will make it possible to have privacy-respecting AI, we believe it is not only feasible, but it is our duty to build AI which respects people and is able to scale without presenting a danger to our societies

Sorry man your site lost me at the token based app store...

Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#16

Post by tyingq »

randyrand wrote: post #7

I'm a little surprised google does not use the user's password for encryption. Seems like they are inviting a very bad data breach in the future.

I imagine it's encrypted over the wire, but since the model is "processed in the cloud", it has to be decrypted to do anything useful with it.

I suppose they could not log anything that could allow correlation to a user/ip, but that creates a different security problem.

I don't see a real technical solution here other than doing all the processing locally.

Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#17

Post by ocdtrekkie »

wstrange wrote: post #12
yardie wrote: post #6

If your data is not end to end private key encrypted, then you are inviting the government in to look at all your shit; photos, documents, logs, everything.

We tend to view this as a technology problem. The real question: Why do we let governments get away with this kind of behavior? Fighting a technology arms race with the government is a losing battle. They can ask for private keys to be handed over - on threat of jail time if you don't comply. We need to start at the ballot box.

It's drastically easier to roll out a new technology than change a government policy which all major political parties are more or less comfortable with.

Governments take time to adapt to new technology, so keep the new technology moving faster than the government knows how to deal with it........

Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#18

Post by cryoshon »

EdSharkey wrote: post #9

> The company also noted it has never received a National Security Letter. Such NSLs are typically filed by intelligence agencies looking for company data. They also normally come with a gag order preventing businesses from revealing their very existence. That means that if Nest ever removes its disclaimer that it hasn’t received an NSL, it likely has been sent one. Whenever I read copy like this, I read it as "no dr…

> I'm wondering if the fourth amendment restricts the US government from arranging for a dragnet-style data feed from some willing corporate partner.

it doesn't. NSA has had room 631 at AT&T for over a decade now. and, of course, everywhere else. there's almost certainly an API for government agencies that they can query without any new warrants -- think facebook, google, amazon, etc.

i remember back in the day people used to say that these things were just conspiracy theories.

Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#19

Post by prolikewh0a »

wstrange wrote: post #12
yardie wrote: post #6

If your data is not end to end private key encrypted, then you are inviting the government in to look at all your shit; photos, documents, logs, everything.

We tend to view this as a technology problem. The real question: Why do we let governments get away with this kind of behavior? Fighting a technology arms race with the government is a losing battle. They can ask for private keys to be handed over - on threat of jail time if you don't comply. We need to start at the ballot box.

>The real question: Why do we let governments get away with this kind of behavior?

Not many care anymore about privacy except basically, us, the tech power user community and then a few stragglers. This new generation just doesn't care because they never really grew up with any in the first place, just shoved right into Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. They probably didn't go too depth into privacy laws, why your privacy matters in their grade school either.

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