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Coddled, Surveilled, and Monetized: How Modern Houses Can Watch You

Posted by timothy on from the eye-oh-tee dept.

Presto Vivace (882157) links to a critical look in Time Magazine at the creepy side of connected household technology. An excerpt: A modern surveillance state isn't so much being forced on us, as it is sold to us device by device, with the idea that it is for our benefit. ... ... Nest sucks up data on how warm your home is. As Mocana CEO James Isaacs explained to me in early May, a detailed footprint of your comings and goings can be inferred from this information. Nest just bought Dropcam, a company that markets itself as a security tool allowing you to put cameras in your home and view them remotely, but brings with it a raft of disquieting implications about surveillance. Automatic wants you to monitor how far you drive and do things for you like talk to your your house when you're on your way home from work and turn on lights when you pull into your garage. Tied into the new SmartThings platform, a Jawbone UP band becomes a tool for remotely monitoring someone else's activity. The SmartThings hubs and sensors themselves put any switch or door in play. Companies like AT&T want to build a digital home that monitors your security and energy use. ... ... Withings Smart Body Analyzer monitors your weight and pulse. Teddy the Guardian is a soft toy for children that spies on their vital signs. Parrot Flower Power looks at the moisture in your home under the guise of helping you grow plants. The Beam Brush checks up on your teeth-brushing technique. Presto Vivaci adds, "Enough to make the Stasi blush. What I cannot understand is how politicians fail to understand what a future Kenneth Starr is going to do with data like this."

10 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. The Watchers 'Wet Dream' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    IMHO, anyone who implements this and gets burgled should have known better.
    The spooks will also love this.
    The Advertisers will be frothing at the mouth at the thought of getting access to this.
    'Dave, as you seem to have spent the last hour sitting on the John, perhaps you might be interested in a padded seat for your 'throne'?'

    etc etc etc

    This is just getting silly. Our private lives are NOT FOR SALE (or Spying)

  2. It's just a mater of time... by Kenja · · Score: 4, Informative

    I always cringe a bit when I see the "put web cams in your house! For security!" commercials. It's just a mater of time until Xfinity or what not get's compromised and all those web cams you use to check your kids get used by other people... to "check your kids".

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    1. Re:It's just a mater of time... by Noah+Haders · · Score: 3, Funny

      this is why I'm really excited about Apple's HomeKit structure. It's essentially a "walled garden" to allow your devices to connect but keep them in line in terms of sharing information or providing external access. We really need a gatekeeper here to keep out the corporate predators. Apple is the only company with a legitimate financial interest in protecting your privacy, because it is a big differentiator between them and Google, Facebook and their ilk.

  3. It's getting scary by Russ1642 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I went to the hospital a while back and they started collecting all sorts of private data. They even insisted on getting a blood sample, probably for some kind of DNA database. Then, when the doctor left me alone for a minute I looked on the counter at his clipboard and there it was. The smoking gun. He had PAGES of information on me. So be warned, the government is already doing everything it can to monitor the population.

    1. Re:It's getting scary by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You have for-profit doctors. They sure ain't workin' for free.

      In Canada, most doctors are paid by FFS (fee for service), which gives them some incentive to run up costs. But many other countries, and even some medical companies in America (such as Kaiser), put doctors on a fixed salary. This removes incentives to upcode, and encourages preventative care. For instance, dentists on fixed salaries are FOUR TIMES as likely to use dental sealants, because they no longer have a financial stake in future cavities.

  4. OMG, not my tooth brushing!!! by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is so scary! If somebody learns every detail of the motions I make when I brush my teeth, they will basically have all the info they need to turn me into a zombie servant of the NSA-corprotocracy! And now they also want to know the humidity in my house!? Goddamn it, didn't our founding fathers say that the moisture content of our residence shall not collected? I'm so outraged! Now excuse me while I upload all my photos, featuring everyone I've ever associated with, to Facebook.

    1. Re:OMG, not my tooth brushing!!! by QuietLagoon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ... If somebody learns every detail of the motions I make when I brush my teeth...

      While your comment sounds like over-the-top sarcasm, keep in mind the time when you go to the dentist and your dental insurance company refuses to pay their portion of the bill because you have not been brushing your teeth properly....

  5. Or, you know by boristdog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You could just live in a regular house without all that crap.

  6. Taxes by nospam007 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "What I cannot understand is how politicians fail to understand what a future Kenneth Starr is going to do with data like this."

    A heating tax
    A sleeping tax ...
    and if you don't pay the sleeping tax more than 178 days in a year, you are living elsewhere and you need to pay a secondary habitation tax.

  7. So confused by Moof123 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Call me a curmudgeon, but I just don't see the need for most of this crap. Why even have a light switch that even has the capability to report you back to galactic central?!

    My manual light switches (horrors!) work just fine. I don't see it as even a minor burden to flip them on-and off. Heck my 22 month old has managed to figure them out, and actually finds them fun (actual horrors!). Only a couple of them have required a hardware upgrade in the last ~35 years of their operation (how many web-connected things can claim that!).

    My thermostat is mostly on a basic automatic cycle to be cool at night and comfy during the day. We don't find it to be a big deal to set it to manual or off when we are gone for a while. We chose to live in a moderate climate where further optimization would net us less than our rounding error every month (heating and cooling are 2% of our gross income).

    I just see most of this auto-magic web based crap as an attempt to fix problems that don't exist, or are so minor they aren't worth fixing. In my mental calculus is the likelihood that these things will have bugs, break, and require a lot of tinkering to keep them in a hassle-free operating condition long enough to have a positive ROI.

    But again, I am a curmudgeon.