Posted on 11/07/2014 7:16:57 PM PST by Swordmaker
By showing the intrusive nature of a smart TV, the whole pitch for IoT gets a lot harder
I've long felt the Internet of Things would be a tricky sell for a number of reasons, security and privacy being chief among them. People may not like having so many aspects of their lives connected to the internet, whether it's out of fear of being hacked or the intrusive nature of the companies behind the products.
The latest story on the privacy front won't help. Michael Price, counsel in the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, has written a detailed blog entry on why he is literally "terrified" to turn on his new TV. Hyperbole? Maybe. I mean, I'd just take the thing back. But he has a point.
Price actually sat down and read the 46-page privacy policy that comes with his TV. Here's what he found:
"The amount of data this thing collects is staggering. It logs where, when, how, and for how long you use the TV. It sets tracking cookies and beacons designed to detect ‘when you have viewed particular content or a particular email message.’ It records ‘the apps you use, the websites you visit, and how you interact with content.’ It ignores ‘do-not-track’ requests as a considered matter of policy.
"It also has a built-in camera — with facial recognition. The purpose is to provide ‘gesture control’ for the TV and enable you to log in to a personalized account using your face. On the upside, the images are saved on the TV instead of uploaded to a corporate server. On the downside, the Internet connection makes the whole TV vulnerable to hackers who have demonstrated the ability to take complete control of the machine.
"More troubling is the microphone. The TV boasts a ‘voice recognition’ feature that allows viewers to control the screen with voice commands. But the service comes with a rather ominous warning: ‘Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.’ Got that? Don’t say personal or sensitive stuff in front of the TV."
He did not name the brand, but both LG and Samsung are known for this kind of intrusiveness. In both cases, you have the option of disabling all this data collection, but you lose all the Smart TV features, some of which are pretty nice.
Price comes to a devastating conclusion, which I agree with.
"Indeed, as the 'Internet of Things' matures, household appliances and physical objects will become more networked. Your ceiling lights, thermostat, and washing machine — even your socks — may be wired to interact online. The FBI will not have to bug your living room; you will do it yourself."
This article has shot around the Internet like mad. I am hardly the only person who has picked it up. And with that little paragraph, Price has summed up the biggest fear of the IoT concept and what will be the hardest sell to non-techie Americans. There is so much concern over NSA spying and eavesdropping as it is. He just hit people right where they live, and Price hardly comes off as a hysterical conspiracy theorist of the Adam Jones/David Icke variety.
IoT is a wide-ranging concept that will cover many, many areas. Consumer electronics is just a part of it. So no, I don't think this will hurt the overall concept. It would take more than one blog post to do that. But every consumer who reads this is going to think twice about any "Smart" appliance in the future.
Think about this from another angle. The watched have a watcher. A co-worker often told me about another worker he knew. His job was to watch video captured from city buses in SF. Every bus had a couple cameras recording everything going on every day. Recording thousands of people. The worker was going nuts from spying on so many people, and ready to kill himself.
Now picture Big Brother spying on millions of us, watching us and listening to us with our mundane conversations. Day after day, like a drippy faucet without end. These spies are going to go nuts trying to find a needle in a haystack of inane ridiculous conversations. At least that gives me some comfort; they will be overloaded with boredom and stupid chatter.
Yes, that's happening. Cameras everywhere. Parking meters that have cameras (well they do where I live). Cameras so tiny that you can't easily spot them unless you know they are there.
Just because you know you're being watched doesn't mean you have to give up all privacy. I've read of some groups giving tips on how to disguise yourself to become invisible to cameras and face recognition. By applying a few marks with makeup on your face, and/or wearing weird glasses and hats, you can fool face recognition software that makes you unrecognizable as a person. As for audio, much tougher to beat that kind of tracking.
This would annoy Hollywood. But I don't watch that many movies, so I don't care if Hollywood goes bankrupt (it may, but creative movie makers won't).
Trusted computing devices must always trust their owners first.
That might screw up some possible business models, but I don't give a damn!
Actually any speaker can be a reasonable microphone, I thought of this back when they started with the instant on feature, been paranoid for a long time :)
It can, but it's another consideration to connect it to outgoing circuitry. Going backwards through digital circuitry is really not possible as there are uni-directional diodes in the circuitry.
bkmk
So you can have a camera with audio recording data built inside your television set but not in your home security system (by law)? That doesn't make any sense.
The other thing pushing smart appliances are the mandates for the smart grid, in the hope that it will reduce power usage.
Smart Grids - The Promise and the Potential Problems
http://tamarawilhite.hubpages.com/hub/Smart-Grids-The-Promise-and-the-Potential-Problems
I guess if the manufacturer cooperated they could un-uni it, but no manufacturer would ever do that right :)
But why make it some much easier for them by providing the hardware, open invitation, and our blind eye?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.