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Internet of Things Demands New Social Contract To Protect Privacy

Posted by samzenpus on from the don't-harvest-my-data-bro dept.

chicksdaddy writes "Changes brought about by the Internet of Things demands the creation of a whole new social contract to enshrine the right to privacy and prevent the creation of technology-fueled Orwellian surveillance states in which individual privacy protections take a back seat to security and 'control.' That, according to an opinion piece penned by the head of the European Commission's Knowledge Sharing Unit. Gérald Santucci argues that technology advances, including the advent of wearable technology and the combination of inexpensive, remote sensors and Big Data analytics threaten to undermine long-held notions like personal privacy and the rights of individuals."

9 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Here's a contract for you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I reserve the right to disable the network connection and recording capabilities of any device in a public space with sensors capable of detecting or inferring my presence.

    1. Re:Here's a contract for you by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To which the only sane response is, "Good luck with that, Ace".

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    2. Re:Here's a contract for you by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 4, Funny

      So your plan is to go around to a lot of private businesses disabling their security cameras?

      Probably should help yourself to the till while you're at it - you know, compensation for the effort.

  2. Anonymous & Unpopular by Chrontius · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's getting pretty hard to be an anonymous member of an unpopular minority these days.

    Hell, it took me thirty seconds to figure out how to prove someone plays D&D using Find My Friends and one flaky and/or gullible friend to expose location data. And zero budget. When all your crap is posting to Facebook on your behalf

    1. Re:Anonymous & Unpopular by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think there is a real danger that within a generation or two the concept of privacy will just go away. We will just come to accept that everything is recorded and monitored for our own safety. It's the age old conflict between people wanting privacy but also wanting there to be CCTV footage when someone dings their car.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  3. yea, a social contract! by khallow · · Score: 3, Informative

    I think of all the current political terms out there, "social contract" has to be one of the most worthless. It's a "contract" that you "agree" with by not trying to destroy society hard enough. It doesn't actually exist in any concrete form. And the terms of the supposed contract mean whatever the speaker feels they mean at the moment.

  4. Even open source has tracking and back doors now. by Animats · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We need to be much less tolerant of things that "phone home" to some headquarters. Or accept remote patches. We now have to assume that anything with a remote patch capability can be exploited.

    You might think open source would be better. It's not. Even the Mozilla Foundation has become squishy-soft on enforcing their own privacy rules. Check out BlockSite, a Firefox add-on which used to just block requested sites. It was bought up by a company called WIPS, which buys up abandoned apps and puts in back-door tracking of every site visited. After a year of pressure from WIPS, Jorge Villalobos at Mozilla caved in and let them install tracking in an existing add-on and auto update it.

    For Linux, Ubuntu pushes an awful lot of updates to supposedly "stable" versions. Is there a back door in there? Is anybody looking?

  5. Re:the usual empty bloviations by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 3, Funny

    Head of the Senate Committee on Fabulousness, obviously.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  6. IOT and utility meters by mcmf · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have been wondering about this re my utility meters. Currently my teleswitch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleswitch) enabled electricity meter is read a few times a year, and these readings are clearly the properly of my provider. However in an IOT world my electricity consumption would be continuously available as part of maximising use of solar or off peak rates etc. But who owns my consumption data? No doubt my provider, who owns the meter, would find somebody to sell it to and equally, various 'security' agencies would insist they had to have full access to it. I am sure that careful examination it of could reveal tons of personal info.