Is Your Fridge Spying on You?
As a subscriber to the MIT Technology Review, I receive regular emails from them. Today I read their email that began with this paragraph.
"Do you know how many internet-connected devices there are inside your home? I certainly don’t. These days, it could be almost anything: a thermostat, a TV, a lightbulb, an air conditioner, or a refrigerator. But what I do know, thanks to some of the conversations I’ve had over the past few weeks, is just how much data they’re producing, and how many people can access that data if they want to. Hint: it’s a lot."
I don't have any IoT devices, but do have some communications devices which I acquired for that purpose. I bet a lot of people do have new appliances or items meeting the IoT definition, and I thought to provide this information to those of you that may not subscribe to the MIT Technology Review.
"...I certainly wouldn’t have expected that if I were under investigation, a police officer—with a warrant, of course—could see my hungry face each time I opened my fridge hunting for cheese."
While I have searched fruitlessly for this content on the link provided in the email, I did not find it there. I may simply be incompetent to ferret it out, so this is the best I can do to enable you to read the content itself. I am not comfortable simply reproducing the entirety of their content here. I believe if you subscribe yourself, you will be able to read that email I reference herein.
However, the thrust of the email is that researchers, and in particular police seeking evidence in criminal cases, are able to access IoT devices and the evidence they may or may not have collected. As noted above, such devices can take pictures, record audio, and undertake any number of means of recording data, which are today not only available to police seeking evidence of crimes, but to corporations and any random hackers that happen to seek it as well.
“I’m like … obsessed. Every time I see a device, I think, How could I extract data from there?...says Epifani."
In the case of minors, there is clearly a risk of violations of law protecting the data they generate from being collected. But that is not my primary reason for posting this information. If your light bulbs, toasters, or toothbrushes might be taking pictures of you, or recording audio, temperature, air pressure, or any of a million possible data points that are conceivable, I thought you should be aware of it.
I am not interested in my toilet taking pictures of my bowel movements, so I will not acquire an IoT toilet. I hope you will make your own informed choices regarding the appliances you buy and use.
In the near future
Non-GMO food will be sold on the black market
and
Non-IOT devices will be sold on the black market too.
My fridge is not spying on me, but my roomie's Television and Ring-camera are.
My roomie complains about my internet usage ( while i am on here typing text...) but my roomie invites in all these spying devices. What a world we live in.
It is my hope, as I believe is indicated by the title of your last post (which I haven't read yet, preferring your personal comment to me) that we will soon be printing our own circuits, and manufacturing our own appliances.
Problem solved.
Thanks!
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A good bit of my childhood was spent getting technology to do things most of the adults never imagined it could do, so I am suspicious by default of stuff now. There's damn sure no IoT in my house.
Still, the inexorable advance of surveillance as convenience is downright disconcerting. Also makes you wonder what people will do if/when EMP weapons start getting used with some regularity.
Sadly, I think too many will not be able to survive without the easy means that have been available to them all their lives. I can live on wild munchies, at least here, as I was raised hunting and foraging for my supper on an island in Alaska. Too many more will despair of even trying, and simply capitulate and accept whatever they must to be fed and housed by whoever offers to.
I hope, and not only hope, but expect, those that are wise, competent, and unafraid, like yourself, will do what my friend @builderofcastles has just posted, and start making themselves such goods and services they and their communities need.
A remarkable revolution is ongoing, and today decentralization of the means of production is the cutting edge of technological advance in every field of industry. Ever less are we limited to the products centralized industries manufacture. Just over a month ago the first 3D printed spaceship launched off Earth. I consider that to be an historic beginning of the paradigm shift that will replace consumerism with productivism, and the real beginning of human freedom to come.
Thanks!
xdd thanks science for the spying fridges
I thoroughly vetted this information back ten, twelve years ago. I won't go into the lengthy discussion why. There were cases brought against a company, I want to say it was one of the cable companies, Verizon comes to mind, where they were putting camera's in television cable boxes and spying on people...but it wasn't a camera per say operated like we think, it had the ability to show range of size of the person(s) in the room but not the actual person. By doing such they could gage what kind of commercials to aim at the individuals as they were watching television. So if it was adult sizes they'd do adult content ads, if it was kids they'd do kid content ads. If I remember right, it was in the state of California where it was first introduced and for settlement of the lawsuits legislation was passed they couldn't do this without written or prior consent. Which is why I think you see now with these new streaming televisions that you have to give consent to view streaming stuff for free. There, I guess, has to be a trade off somewhere. But do people literally know camera's could be in those televisions...I just bought a streaming television, I haven't read the agreement as I haven't used the free stuff yet. My kids have net flick so I watch that if I feel inclined to watch television. I don't know tv bores me, I end up falling to sleep, probably why I haven't subscribed to other channels yet but I'd opt to pay the few extra bucks if I wanted commercial free, it's usually during commercials I fall to sleep...lol. This television though does ask you what room of the house the television is in...so that's rather odd. What else I found odd was in a world where everything lights up and flickers driving you nuts this television on/off button doesn't stay lit so you really can't tell if it's on or off even if you weren't using it you really don't know if they have a way of turning it on without you knowing it. Which really sent my mind ablaze the other day after I had returned from the store and something I had bought but never shopped for online or googled for showed up in an ad. That was strange. Really strange. I don't know if there's some link between a rewards site I frequent where I can view what I bought and got rewarded for buying or if the television is spying on me....lol. I figure they'll eventually get bored, bigger fish than me to advertise to.
Did you know there is a season to fish for herring in Alaska? They don't fish for herring like they do for salmon or halibut, with a rod and reel. Nor even with longlines. They use nets, and they try to scoop up the whole school of fish, and not leave even one of them free to roam and eventually breed. I think we're like herring to these fishers of men (and women).
Regarding cameras in TVs, I understand this essential principle of physics. Equations work in both directions. If a soundwave rustling some carbon granules can push some electrons out of them, it can be a microphone. Pushing electrons at the carbon granules can turn that microphone into a speaker. Used to be the old timey style telephones had end caps on either end you could screw on and off, and the microphone and speaker could be removed. Mayhap we kids screwing around would put them back in backwards, with the mic in the speaker end and the speaker in the mic end.
The telephones still worked that way, just not as well.
Televisions are the same way. If electrons hitting a phosphor screen (old timey color TVs) can push a photon out the other side, then a photon hitting that phosphor screen can push an electron out the other side. Every microphone is a speaker, and every speaker is a microphone, and every camera is a monitor and every monitor is a camera. They actually don't need to put a separate camera or microphone into TV monitors, because the TV is actually a camera, and the speaker is also a microphone. They can use phase shifting to make these work in both directions at the same time (or by splitting the time in microseconds into operations in both directions).
My computer doesn't have a camera or microphone at all. I made it from parts and I didn't include either of those. However, I am not fooled, and am completely aware the NSA is admiring my penor at will. They have that power. If you didn't know this before, you do know it now (or at least are alerted that I believe this and you can confirm it through your own research).
Lastly, not a few folks have remarked in the vein you have regarding your purchase and ads. People tell me they were just thinking of something, and ads for such things popped up. I have recently read that AI can translate brain activity into text. Read minds, in other words. While that may seem farfetched, what I understand about neural functionality leads me to believe this is not farfetched at all, and in fact with sensitive enough antennae, could be done right in your living room, or my office, or wherever such antennae and some processing equipment can be made available to an appropriate AI.
So, there's that. If you don't want your mind read, quit thinking thoughts. Maybe there's something to that tinfoil hat stuff. Faraday cages are said to work.
Thanks!