
The Internet of Things is broken. How to fix it and why we should - todayispotato
http://www.xithing.io/iot_is_broken.html
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TrevorJ
It's sad, but the first thing I think of now when I see or read about a new
IoT technology is "what extra data about me does this expose to bulk
collection programs and advertisers?"

Disney has some really amazing tech where a smartwatch device can detect what
dumb object you are holding, be it a pair of scissors, your refrigerator
handle, hand tools, etc. This kind of tech would be absolutely game changing
for many people on a fundamental level, but when you think about what could be
learned about you from mining that data, and then you realise it would be
foolish to think that you can somehow keep that data private.... Gah, it just
pisses me off that we have to assume any new info we create about ourselves
digitally will likely be abused.

On the other hand, maybe once tech enables governments to know every detail of
your life down to the most private level people will get fed up and things
will change. Phone calls and email are one thing, but IoT means every moment
of your life, every activity, every preference, every habit could be exposed
catalogued and stored.

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dasboth
IoT scares me for that very reason. I don't like the idea of people trying to
infer things about me by how often I use my toaster, and I don't feel like I
gain enough by my household appliances connecting to the internet to offset
that privacy issue.

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TrevorJ
To me, that feeling is a fundamental warning that something is deeply wrong
with the way we handle privacy in modern society.

It should be completely unacceptable that we have to worry about this.

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krapp
The incentive isn't there for building secure IoT products, but products that
use online connectivity to offset costs by capturing value back from the
consumer. When every refrigerator built monitors your purchases and
consumption on behalf of the manufacturer, the store you bought it from and
the companies who made the food in it, and probably the pizza box you just
stuffed in there knows what shows you're watching, what are people going to
do, just go back to using iceboxes?

~~~
TrevorJ
And even if devices are designed to be secure, what good does it do when
agencies with nearly unlimited resources actively try to subvert it?

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eveningcoffee
Let me tell you how to fix it. Burn it with fire. Napalm should do. If it does
not, try termite (of course metaphorically speaking).

We should not allow collection of data about our very close environment,
especially home. This will open a direct threat to our well being.

I give you one specific example.

Suppose you have an IoT device in your bedroom that uploads CO2 values (of
course it may also do something useful too such us showing this data to you or
regulating the ventilation).

Now the rate of CO2 production depends on bodily activities. More activity
means more CO2 production. I suppose that you agree that having this
information you more or less are capable to deduce when a couple has sex.

This means that we could calculate a metric how much sex is going on and
relate it to specific user.

Suppose that we detect that rate of sex has gone down by 20 (a made up number
dependant of our model). We can now sell this information.

This information is for example useful perhaps for psychologist who want to
sell you counselling.

But it is even more interesting for divorce lawyers who now could prey on
couples having period of difficulty in their sex lives.

Even more, this information could be made more valuable by some additional
influence. For example feeding the user with articles related to marital
happiness and sex life.

I leave the rest for you imagination.

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tdkl
> Judging on research by Gartner and McKinsey, who predict that the IoT will
> add $1.9 trillion to the global economy by 2020, and $2.7-$6.2 trillion by
> 2025, we really seem to want to do just that. But why? The answer could be
> as simple as powerful: because it could vastly improve our lives.

Improve our lives or those who sell the idea of IoT and what comes with it
(data) ?

I still don't believe what improvement it brings and if those outweigh
possible privacy and security implications.

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TrevorJ
>I still don't believe what improvement it brings and if those outweigh
possible privacy and security implications.

It's tragic that this is true, because the benefits of this sort of tech to
individuals could be huge, game changing. For this to get cut off at the knees
because we live in a world where our privacy is not respected is infuriating.

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mcguire
Once upon a time I worked in what later became the "Solutions Experience
Laboratory" at IBM Austin (I worked in it _physically_ ; I didn't do much
there.) The lab had a set of advanced technology demos, one of which was the
"kitchen of the future". (I helped set up the "office of the future, said in a
deep, announcerly voice.)

Aside from the refrigerator/stove that you could put cold meals in, then
connect over the internet to tell to start cooking, one of the best demos was
an RFID reader built into the kitchen counter. You could set a prescription
drug bottle down on the counter and a system would look up the interactions
between that drug and the others that you had been prescribed, to warn you of
harmful interactions. It could also warn you (or someone else) if you did not
take your prescriptions on time or if you were running low on something
necessary. (Honestly, the only thing cooler was the ice cream used to level-
out the energy use of the freezer. (Yeah, and that experiment didn't last
long.))

There are a lot of possibilities for the IoT, most of which are small, trivial
things that could ultimately make a large difference. But mostly it seems set
to make the world worse.

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pjc50
_" Why in the first place would you want to connect every object in your
physical surrounding to the internet?"_

The great unanswered question of IoT.

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sanoli
Yeah, and I remember in the early 90's a lot of people asking me "But why
would you want to carry a phone with you all the time?"

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fx85ms
I believe this is not a very fair comparison to connecting things to the
Internet. When people in the 90s question whether they needed a phone all the
time, they were questioning the usefulness of doing so. In contrast,
connecting things to the Internet exposes the user to an additional vector of
attack and exploitation (crappy or non-existent security from manufacturers,
adtech companies selling your data etc). So the question changes from "what
convenience is there" to "why would you put yourself to such a risk?"

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AnimalMuppet
TL;DR: Security is a big deal, and IoT doesn't do it very well. Solutions will
be talked about in another article.

I found that rather disappointing, and pretty much a waste of my time.

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thealexbaron
Agreed. I thought there would be an interesting proposition for how to fix,
but instead it said "We should really think about it."

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blhack
This article doesn't seem to address much regarding the "Internet of Things",
and seems to just be addressing security in general. None of this seems
specific to IoT.

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OJFord
I kept waiting for the article to actually say something of substance, but
then I reached the end?

