Privacy and the Internet of Things
Kenneth Taylor

16 October 2017

This week, our topic is "The Internet of Things." What will life be like when every road you travel, every device you own, every building you enter is connected to the internet? Will these developments transform our world in ways that enrich our lives? Or will they just create more opportunities for hackers, corporations, and governments to pry into every aspect of our lives?

在某种程度上，物联网似乎并没有那么大的意义。互联网已经存在了几十年。虽然互联网已经在很多方面影响了我们的生活，但当我们把更多的东西连接到互联网上时，事情会有很大的不同，这并不是显而易见的。

But in fact, we’re talking about a true sea change in the digital landscape. Start with the vast number and variety of things that will be involved in the internet of things. We’re not talking about just the usual suspects like computers, smart phones and, lately, watches. It goes way beyond that. It’s cars, refrigerators, potentially every system or appliance in every building in the world. And then there are roads, bridges, train tracks. And monitors of every sort: heart monitors, sleep monitors, baby monitors. And we’re not just talking about passively hooking them up to the internet, we’re also talking about making each of these new things on the internet smart.

很快，将会有数十亿相互连接的智能设备，收集和分析大量的数据，自主地共享数据，而这一切都无需任何人工干预。想想美国摇摇欲坠的基础设施。想象一下，智能桥梁会不断监测自己的状态，当它们需要维修时，会自动向交通部门发出警报，在等待维修人员到来时，它们可能会自动关闭，并自动改变交通路线。就好像道路系统本身会是一个有生命的、有思想的东西。

这是有利的一面。但也有不利的一面。即使你不是勒德分子，也会担心物联网的潜在负面影响。毕竟，我们应该迅速建立一个世界，在这个世界中，我们拥有、操作或互动的每一个设备或物理结构都在不断地收集、分析和传输大量关于我们的数据，甚至不需要我们的许可，这真的如此清晰吗?在这样一个世界里，我们的隐私会发生什么?在这样一个世界上，我们的安全会怎么样呢?我们如何防止物联网成为黑客的天堂?

业界喜欢给出的最后一个问题的答案是，所有东西都将被加密。人们当然会担心可以加密的东西可能会被反加密。但内部人士坚持认为，我们正处于一个几乎万无一失的加密时代。如果没有加密密钥，就无法解加密已加密的内容。今天的加密算法会生成高度复杂和随机的加密密钥，几乎不可能被破解。面对如此复杂的加密技术，黑客根本没有机会。或者他们喜欢这么说!也许这是正确的…也许吧。但谁知道呢? The proof will be in the pudding. And even if encryption is as fool proof as they say, we’re still going to have governments with their already insatiable demands for back doors to deal with. What about that?

The citizen in me, the one who deeply believes in democracy, wants to say in response that the government is ultimately answerable to us, the citizens. So if we citizens don’t accept back doors, governments won’t get back doors! Besides, the corporations are on our side in this. They don’t want to give governments back doors either. Their business model in the age of the internet of things will depend on selling you not just astounding convenience, but rock rib security that they can promise cannot be broken.

The problem is that it’s not just the US government, or even democratically accountable and responsible governments that are the issue. It’s governments all over the world, from the most authoritarian and anti-democratic to the least authoritarian that want back doors. And they want them for pretty much the same reason—so called national security, especially in when there are a growing array of non-state actors who organize themselves and mobilize their constituencies via the internet. And I’m afraid that governments have a way of getting what they want, whatever their citizens may say, especially when it comes to claims of national security.

听着，我想我们可以尝试在物联网时代为全球消费者的权利发起一场新的有力的斗争。我不否认这样的努力是值得的，即使最终证明是徒劳的。但是，我更喜欢悲剧英雄，他们克服一切可能的困难，努力用意志使自己存在。但是，我们都将创造一个世界范围内的物联网，收集、报道、分析并分享人类几乎所有行为的信息，而政府和坏人将无法找到获取所有这些数据的方法，这似乎是一个白日梦。

I don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water. We surely do want some of the many benefits that the internet of things is likely to bring. I wear a fitness tracking device everywhere I go. I want medical researchers to have access to that data—at least if it’s depersonalized and aggregated with other people’s data. Of course, my insurance company is a different thing entirely. I’m not sure that I want them to have access to that data, especially if it means that they can, say, raise my rates whenever they detect that I am slacking off. I Just don’t want to give them that much power over me.

The deeper question lurking just beneath the surface here is about who will own and control all this information. You can bet it won’t be the individual consumer! It’s much more likely to be private corporations. In a way, we have already crossed that Rubicon. Huge corporations already track just about every click we make on the current internet. And though that hasn’t caused people to completely abandon the internet, it has played an important role in the growth of the dark web that lies mostly beyond the reach of prying eyes. Which raises the possibiliy that by expanding the reach of prying eyes, by pushing traditional cyberspace out into physical space more and more, the internet of things will drive more and more people underground. Do we really want that? Bad things happen, I am told, on the dark web.

In all honesty, I doubt there’s any stopping the growth of either the internet of things or even that of the dark web. But I do think it would be good if we slowed down a bit and thought about the world we are creating before taking the full plunge into the inevitable future. So join us as we do just that—slow down and think more carefully and philosophically about the pros and cons of this new fangled internet of things that is rushing upon us like a ferocious storm.

Comments(9)

Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Monday, October 16, 2017 -- 12:08 PM

I made up my mind about most

I made up my mind about most of the social media madness several years ago. I'm agin' it. Don't do it. No way. No how. Over the last few months, I have particularly noticed the self-imposed alienation of many who have replaced their social lives with social media life. They do not know how to relate to human beings, one to one and in the flesh. I mentioned in another comment that I had stumbled across Diane Ackerman. I was taken by her following remarks from page 122 of THE HUMAN AGE: "...Nature is dynamic and haphazard, and so are we---not a serene combo. Maybe it's one that's best described in paradoxes such as organized chaos, but we're not beings who feel comfortable with paradox. Paradox tugs the brain in opposite directions, confounds our quest for simple truths, and throws a monkey wrench into the delights of habit..." It goes on for a bit, talking about disorderly beings with order-craving minds. As Wilber said often: And just so. Perhaps that is all that all of this Internet stuff is about. Trendy moderns fear a disorganized world; disorganized leaders; messy stuff. But, well, that is who we are. It is a substrate of our humanness. Like it , or not.

npauthor's picture

npauthor

Monday, October 16, 2017 -- 12:23 PM

We fool ourselves by

We fool ourselves by trusting that scientists or science as a whole has a soul. Neither as a matter of course takes into consideration the topic of integrity, rarely ever stopping to challenge or even question the moral consequences of any innovation, consumed with giddiness and self-congratulatory arrogance. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and many others, before and since have shone the light of introspection on this human weakness, the Internet along with the many other threads having emanated from it in recent years just the latest evidence of our humanity's hubris.

Further, the dichotomy of industry v. government is a false, misleading and mostly non-existent one. It should be obvious to all but those denying climate change that the two have melded into one all-encompassing, seamless entity which is quickly swallowing up what's left of privacy, democratic principles, concern for the common good, physical and psychological health, not to mention the planet itself, sanity and civility.

mirugai's picture

mirugai

Monday, October 16, 2017 -- 4:54 PM

CYBER ATTACK

CYBER ATTACK

The PG&E gas explosion in San Bruno a few years back was blamed on gas lines rupturing under unusual pressure that the lines were not capable of withstanding. It was never settled whether the lines were dilapidated, or not designed or situated or connected adequately. Or whether some kind of event of higher than usual pressure occurred.

The fires in the north bay have a few unusual features which surprised me. One, while undoubtedly many fires were ignited by embers from trees and bushes on fire blown by winds, the grid pattern of house destruction and its uniformity suggests other sources for those in housing developments. Hundreds of houses seem to have been burned up simultaneously; and burned up rapidly, so rapidly that a fire department did not have time to respond to a fire in one house before it could spread to another. Also, I saw many videos of houses on fire not from fire on the roof, but from fire starting in the basement or under the house. Many destroyed house sites I saw still had flames actively coming from gas lines indicating that the gas lines to the development had not been turned off or capped upstream or at mains.

现在每家每户都有一台电脑/联网电表。

Could the system be hacked so that the gas lines were over loaded and then the safety shut off disabled (which they clearly were). Every house has an open gas pilot in the water heater or in a gas furnace pilot (it was getting cold at night and this might have been the first time furnaces were in use), or in the kitchen stove, or in the faux fireplace, to ignite gas accumulation.

如果这被证明是原因，“政府”会告诉我们吗?怎样才能防止这样的事情发生呢?即使这不是一次网络攻击，这是一个现实的场景吗?

OzzyData's picture

OzzyData

Friday, October 20, 2017 -- 8:54 AM

I heard the podcast last

I heard the podcast last night and really liked it. But there is one issue that we slightly alluded to but never addressed full on: what merchants and marketers do once they have such intimate access to us. This has already made our devices traitorous.

Merchants and marketers pester the hell out of us.
- There are alerts that are defaulted "on" and we have to figure out how to opt out of them.
- Devices come with apps and features that we cannot uninstall or disable; and they serve no real function other than an opportunity to serve ads to us.
- Apps that we want to use require certain permissions that are hard to understand. It might be legitimate for a video player to control my phone calls, but it's not clear to me why.

简而言之。翰威特一直在说，我们无法控制我们的设备。

所以，当我想到扩大物联网时，我想到的是为别人提供更多的营销机会，以及我的生活中更多的干扰。

I imagine a smart refrigerator that text messages me to let me know my buttermilk has expired AND it's got a coupon for more buttermilk. But I don't want more buttermilk. It was for a single recipe and I'm done.

物联网还代表了对不断更新、补丁和在线的需求。如果我拖欠了账单，网络断了怎么办?这导致了这样一个事实:互联网服务提供商把互联网服务当作娱乐交付，而我们越来越多的人把互联网当作一种公用事业来依赖。我不喜欢给康卡斯特打电话，我关于工作/职业需求的谈话总是与HBO和我能看到多少个电视频道纠缠在一起。

Those are the ways that I find these devices as already traitorous. It's not just a conversation about hacking, government and privacy. Also, if the government has spied on me, I don't know. But many times EVERY DAY, the corporate interests connected to my phone offer a steady stream of annoyances.

I DO NOT want a smart refrigerator, alarm clock, shower head, razor, washing machine, etc. I see it as just more pestering when I'm already in a ridiculous battle just to get some peace.

Ken Taylor's picture

Ken Taylor

Monday, October 23, 2017 -- 4:27 AM

Hi OzzyData:

Hi OzzyData:

I agree that Carl was a little too sanguine for my own tastes about the potential for alignment between the interests of the producer and the interests of the consumer. At a bare minimum, you are right that smart devices will be used by producers as major marketing opportunities. But I think it goes far, far beyond that. The economic incentives for producers to collect and pool data from our smart devices in data centers is enormous. Though we consumers will surely want SOME of our data pooled, we want far less of it pooled than producers will want to see pooled. Thus some sort of tug of war will ensue. And I wouldn't at all place my bets on the power of the consumer to win that tug of war.

OzzyData's picture

OzzyData

Tuesday, October 24, 2017 -- 12:57 PM

肯恩,是的。You all did an

肯恩,是的。你们都做得很好，讨论了集中数据、隐私以及我们想生活在什么样的世界。

The distinction I'm making is perhaps less urgent than one of privacy. It's an issue that falls under the topic of "Persuasive Technology." It's a discipline that's used for keeping us on platforms, apps, and devices. Tristan Harris, formerly of Google, describes a trick that Facebook uses:

从Facebook的角度来看，收到某人的生日通知并不是一件高尚的事情。这实际上是一种让人们通过互惠交易尽可能长时间地留在Facebook上的方法。如果我看到这是琼的生日，我就会觉得有些内疚，写“生日快乐”。反过来，琼会因为内疚而说“谢谢”。

And what happens when we're on FB longer? We see more ads.

特里斯坦·哈里斯还警告说，有一种观点必须处理:“我从你那里偷的时间越多，我赚的钱就越多。”

That summarizes why I believe our devices are already traitorous. As the Internet-of-Things expands, I just see more annoyances that steal time from us. And, like you, I don't see how consumers are going to win this tug-of-war.

robertcrosman@gmail.com's picture

robertcrosman@g...

Tuesday, February 18, 2020 -- 1:16 PM

I was unsettled to hear the

上周，我听到刚去世不久的肯·泰勒(Ken Taylor)的声音从我的收音机里轰鸣而出，还有这个，我很不安。也许从2017年开始，这些剧集已经被存档了，这一事实本可以在节目一开始就宣布。

As for the cheery assurance of the MIT engineer guest that our privacy is safe, so long as our government doesn't pass a law making a "backdoor" mandatory on our devices. This is far from reassuring, since those who want such access to our personal date can keep pushing for it, and lobbying for it, until eventually it becomes law - at which point even the cheery engineer admits all is lost. Well, what are the odds that, sooner or later, in the dead of night, perhaps, on Christmas Eve, that law will pass? Pretty good, I'd say - darn near inevitable, in fact. And by then when your "dumb" refrigerator dies, there won't even be any to replace it with but a shiny new "smart" refrigerator, ready to start pumping your data to the govt., and to anyone else able to hack in.

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