US intelligence chief: we might use the internet of things to spy on you

This is why people should be very wary of any device that phones home or generally connects to the internet when it doesn't need to.

Unfortunately, most of the new companies and products in this space seem to be quite willing to do the most insane, privacy destroying things imaginable because their obsession with the 'service' business model.

"“In the future, intelligence services might use the [Internet of Things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials,” Clapper said."

This is one more way that the NSA will break the "in-home" barrier for surveillance, as though keeping track of your online thought isn't enough. It may not be exactly the same as having a camera in your home, but it's uncomfortably close when your toaster can tell the government about your habits.

Um.... duh?

This is the essence of the Snowden revelations: there are no meaningful restraints on the NSA. We can safely ignore everything they or other government representatives say about their activities and assume that the NSA is spying on everyone, all the time, through every mechanism possible, and will continue to expand their reach indefinitely.

Of course they are going to spy on us through IoT devices. That's a given. The interesting question is this: what would we have to do in order to make those spying efforts unproductive?

Where "we might" means "we already are."

IoT = "Intel on Thou".