The Internet of Things is broken. How to fix it and why we should | Hacker News Reader

The Internet of Things is broken. How to fix it and why we should

xithing.io

22 pointstodayispotato21 comments

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

Data collection like this may seem innocuous if its used for advertising, but it's available to anyone with enough power or money to infer what they want from it.

It's a KGB wet dream.

IoT doesn't have to share any data with third parties... it could be shared with you on the local network or your own server... but many devices make it hard... so you have to be careful.

That's correct, but with what we know now it can be pretty much assumed that any security there is will be actively subverted by agencies, companies or both.

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.

> 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.

>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.

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.

"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.

Because we are lazy, and everyone hopes it will help us become even lazier.

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?"

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?"

Mobile phones always had a clear core market who genuinely had an answer to that question, even when the phones were so heavy they were 'carphones'. The market expanded as cost and weight went down.

The categories of home IoT device that seem to have a good answer are the fitness sensors and security systems. The smart kitchen on the other hand is probably doomed to be a bad idea.

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.

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

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.

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

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