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A Future Where Everything Becomes a Computer Is As Creepy As You Feared (nytimes.com)
schwit1 shares a report from The New York Times: More than 40 years ago, Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft with a vision for putting a personal computer on every desk. [...] In recent years, the tech industry's largest powers set their sights on a new target for digital conquest. They promised wild conveniences and unimaginable benefits to our health and happiness. There's just one catch, which often goes unstated: If their novelties take off without any intervention or supervision from the government, we could be inviting a nightmarish set of security and privacy vulnerabilities into the world. And guess what. No one is really doing much to stop it. The industry's new goal? Not a computer on every desk nor a connection between every person, but something grander: a computer inside everything, connecting everyone.
Cars, door locks, contact lenses, clothes, toasters, refrigerators, industrial robots, fish tanks, sex toys, light bulbs, toothbrushes, motorcycle helmets -- these and other everyday objects are all on the menu for getting "smart." Hundreds of small start-ups are taking part in this trend -- known by the marketing catchphrase "the internet of things" -- but like everything else in tech, the movement is led by giants, among them Amazon, Apple and Samsung. [American cryptographer and computer security professional Bruce Schneier] argues that the economic and technical incentives of the internet-of-things industry do not align with security and privacy for society generally. Putting a computer in everything turns the whole world into a computer security threat. [...] Mr. Schneier says only government intervention can save us from such emerging calamities. "I can think of no industry in the past 100 years that has improved its safety and security without being compelled to do so by government."
Cars, door locks, contact lenses, clothes, toasters, refrigerators, industrial robots, fish tanks, sex toys, light bulbs, toothbrushes, motorcycle helmets -- these and other everyday objects are all on the menu for getting "smart." Hundreds of small start-ups are taking part in this trend -- known by the marketing catchphrase "the internet of things" -- but like everything else in tech, the movement is led by giants, among them Amazon, Apple and Samsung. [American cryptographer and computer security professional Bruce Schneier] argues that the economic and technical incentives of the internet-of-things industry do not align with security and privacy for society generally. Putting a computer in everything turns the whole world into a computer security threat. [...] Mr. Schneier says only government intervention can save us from such emerging calamities. "I can think of no industry in the past 100 years that has improved its safety and security without being compelled to do so by government."
Most of these devices are running ZigBee. ZigBee is a suite of "layers". The MAC layer is 802.15.4, network is ZigBee Pro, the application is a binary format call ZigBee Cluster Library. (Google is pushing Thread which is 802.15.4, Thread network layer, ZigBee cluster library for the application). ZigBee Smart Energy is the variant in your electric meter on the side of your house. It uses certificates, a long unique joining code, and a key agreement and certificate authentication scheme call EC-MQV to provide security. Thread has pretty good security, they use a Password Authenticated Key agreement and strong security at every level of communication. Unfortunately, in most other versions of ZigBee security is trumped by convenience.
Libertarianism is the opposite side of Socialism. Both are based on this premise:
"We'll trust and magically it will all work out."
You claim they're opposites, then claim they're the same. But socialism is explicitly the opposite of that idea. We know that wishing and hoping won't make things work, so we actually do something about it. Libertarianism is the willfully ignorant belief that anarchy does not lead to feudalism. (So is anarchism.) Libertarianism also includes the notion that pretending to have a government isn't anarchism.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"