Slashdot Mirror
Privacy Worries For 'Smart' Smoke Alarms
Advocatus Diaboli sends this excerpt from an article about the data collection capabilities of the Nest Protect 'smart' smoke alarms, and how they could become a privacy concern:
Consider that each Protect is packed full of sensors, some of which are capable of much more than they're doing right now: From heat and light sensors to motion sensors and ultrasonic wave sensors. This simple little device could scrape an incredible amount of data about your life if Nest asked it to: From when you get home, to when you go to bed, to your daily routine, to when you cook dinner. Now imagine how a device like that would interlock with another that you keep on your wrist, like the forthcoming Android Wear. Together, they would create a seamless mesh of connectivity where every detail of what you do and where you go is recorded into a living, breathing algorithm based on your life.
Neither Nest nor Google has stated any intention to turn Nest's hardware into more than it is right now. Protect is an alarm, the Thermostat is a thermostat. But as Google ramps up its vision to connect every aspect of our world, from Android Wear to its acquisition of a company that specializes in high-res, near-instantaneous satellite imagery of Earth, it's easier than ever to see why it would cough up billions for a company that has installed hundreds of thousands of Wi-Fi connected devices in the homes of Google users."
Neither Nest nor Google has stated any intention to turn Nest's hardware into more than it is right now. Protect is an alarm, the Thermostat is a thermostat. But as Google ramps up its vision to connect every aspect of our world, from Android Wear to its acquisition of a company that specializes in high-res, near-instantaneous satellite imagery of Earth, it's easier than ever to see why it would cough up billions for a company that has installed hundreds of thousands of Wi-Fi connected devices in the homes of Google users."
Bull. Privacy is not an either-or-proposition.
It is a spectrum and every new data-stalker device we accept in our lives pushes us further into the black.
Your average smart phone knows where it is, the exact position in 3D space, what devices are nearby, whether it is being held versus on a table or in a pocket, whether you are laying down, sitting, walking, jogging, running, biking or driving, whether you are indoors or outdoors, what the temperature is, what the atmospheric pressure is, what the relative humidity is, UV levels, air quality levels, the tone of your voice to determine whether you are happy, sad, angry, ..., and in many cases what your heart rate is when using it by looking at your face.
And more sensors are being added with each revision to make them better able to be everything for you.
There are even sensors out now that will build live 3D models of whatever the phone sees, letting it know what is in it's surroundings.
Your phone already knows the things that your thermostat *can* know, except it does a better job because in our hyper-connected, instant gratification culture it has become the 8th deadly sin to be anywhere without your cell phone for 5 minutes.
While it is good to be considerate about what could happen should all of these existing systems that we already have in our homes and are adding daily get linked together into one gigantic monitoring system, it is an exercise in futility considering that we knowingly don't care because next year we can play Kinectimals on our phone and have our ePet interact with the world by jumping up on the couch or hiding behind the counter.
Thirty four characters live here.
listen, Life is NOT a movie, a hacker cant reconfigure the temperature sensor into a "FLIR heat sensor" to give them ANY information other than how hot it is on the ceiling in the hallway where you mounted it. That Passive IR sensor cant be magically turned into an HD IR camera, it's a single specific function sensor that can detect if smoke has entered the chamber, you cant turn it into a spy camera. Then you have a CO sensor that is specifically designed for it's task, again cant be reconfigured as a direction Co2 and other gas sensors to detect if you have been smoking crack in the bathroom again.
the ONLY data that someone can glean from this is local mounted temperature, alarm state and CO2 levels. Nothing else. even if you left for a 4 week vacation in your Paris apartment you cant even hope to get data if the house is unoccupied unless you set the thermostat to very low and it was the dead of winter.
https://www.sparkfun.com/news/... 6 seconds on google turned this up. It even has links to the sensors data sheets.
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardow... for the ifixit teardown
Please, if you write an article, Know something about the subject, spend DAYS researching it before you publish the information. This is why "bloggers" have zero respect and are mostly ridiculed.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Dave from the NSA here, can you please move the change from the pocket with your cellphone to the other pocket? It's getting hard to hear what you are saying when you walk.
Also please go stand over next to that tall brunette to your left, her cellphone sucks and we cant get a good recording of her discussion about what her boyfriend did to her last night.
Thanks!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's a sad moment of realization that I actually like getting cloths for Christmas now. Mainly because I suck at picking stuff out myself and hate shopping for cloths in general.
Having a job, a fiance, hell owning a house (or well a gradually increasing piece of one) doesn't make you an adult. When someone gifts you a tonne of socks (sister works at a Marks Work Warehouse and gets some ridiculous employee discounts) and you think "awesome, I really needed these", I think that's the moment one realizes they are an adult.