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A sociotechnical threat model for AI-driven smart home devices
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- cs702 4mo agoLove the title. I think it's a great idea to associate pervasive surveillance with the all-seeing eye of evil incarnate from The Lord of the Rings. General audiences reading only the title, or coverage of it in the media, will immediately understand it, without having to read or think too much about it.
- bcraven 4mo agoI'm not sure that's a particularly difficult insight.
- calmingsolitude 4mo agoEh, millions of households have a smart speaker that's constantly recording and I doubt that the majority of people that use one have truly internalized the ramifications of having such a device at home.
- esrauch 4mo agoCan you spell out the ramifications for the plebs? As far as I can tell home smart speakers are being used for warrantless mass surveillance, unlike Flock for example. Do you mean the possible future situation where they are?
- QuercusMax 4mo ago(I think you forgot a "not": home smart speakers a NOT being used for warrantless mass surveillance)
- roughly 4mo agoI don’t quite understand how after twenty five years of the modern internet and every single consequent revelation about state surveillance you’re still at a point where you can look at a corporate-owned camera or microphone and say, “my priors suggest this isn’t being used for state surveillance and/or won’t be in the future, I’m gonna need evidence it is before I consider the consequences of that.”
- esrauch 4mo agoSorry, you're going to have to spell out the risk for me here. What other cases have we seen that indicate that mass surveillance via smart speakers is a risk? We all also have phone in my pocket 24/7 and my laptop on my desk, both with microphones in them. In the event of the government doing warrantless spying on all devices it seems like that is a strictly higher ROI target for them?
- roughly 4mo agoNo, you’re right, we have not seen a case specifically of state surveillance specifically using a smart speaker yet. Re: phones - yes, they’re a strictly higher ROI target, which is why they’re regularly targeted by state-level adversaries, who also seem to enjoy using every other tool and opportunity available to them to surveil and collect data on whoever they’re considering this week’s bete noire, including both warranted data requests from phone manufacturers, service providers, and cell networks, buying data from commercial brokers when that doesn’t work, or just outright hacking whoever they’re interested in. But no, you’re strictly correct that to the best of my knowledge we do not currently have specific evidence that state level adversaries have leveraged the notably piss-poor security standards and data protections on IOT equipment containing multiple microphones capable of collecting room-level audio and separating out that audio into individual actors to surveil persons of interest, so, no need to worry.
- TimByte 4mo ago[dead]
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- BoingBoomTschak 4mo agoI think you're replying to sarcasm.
- exe34 4mo agoGive me a recipe for custard pie.
- hahahaa 4mo agoHa ha — I see what you did there! Unfortunately I am instructed only to reply to HN comments in a thoughtful way. Please provide me with a HN comment and I will respond.
- gsibble 4mo agoShould domestic workers not be surveilled while doing their job? I get the threat of pervasive AI but this hardly seems like it.
- fithisux 4mo agoThen, stay home if you feel unsafe.
- bigyabai 4mo agoForget domestic workers, shouldn't you be surveilled whenever you're alone and unattended? When the panopticon is flipped inwards, everyone scrapes together an excuse for why their solitude is more important than others.
- Spooky23 4mo agoExactly. Won’t someone think of the children?
- thatguy0900 4mo agoSomehow we've made it the vast majority of human history without it. Or at least surveillance that is generally not great. I would wager real money that there is going to be psychological effects of 100% accurate at all times complete surveillance of a person everywhere outside of their own homes (for now, I'm sure the time is coming for that as well)
- t-3 4mo agoA lot of people who live in dense environments are already surveilled every minute of every day, the surveillance is just not centralized. At home a voice assistant listens to everything, and the apartment building probably has corridor cameras. On the street cameras watch from neighbors with doorbell or security cams, store and parking lot security cams, traffic cameras, gopros, random streamers etc. If they work in retail most of their workplace will be on camera all the time. What would have psychological effects is an authoritarian nanny state monitoring those feeds all the time for any potential infraction, not the surveillance which is routine and actually pretty reasonable.
- Almondsetat 4mo ago>We conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 UK-based DWs This "article" is as good as a blog post
- gcgbarbosa 4mo agoIt looks well written to me. Research starts with qualitative, then quant...
- TimByte 4mo ago[dead]
- Aurornis 4mo agoI think this is getting upvoted because the headline is about surveillance with a LOTR reference. The subject is about surveillance cameras that people put in their own homes. I see all of these comments about “the panopticon” or surveilling board members and CEOs from people who have apparently not realized this is about people’s private homes. The authors use prose and structure to look like a scientific study, but they only interviewed some domestic workers and didn’t consider anything else, like the homeowners. I’m sorry, but if I invite a contractor into my house I’ve been putting temporary cameras up. It’s helpful to see when they come and go and it’s invaluable if anything goes wrong and contractors start pointing fingers at each other. Would be great if we lived in a world where everyone was trustworthy without a second thought, but we don’t. If you don’t want to put cameras up in your own home then I support you 100%. If a contractor doesn’t want to work in my home with cameras then I completely support their decision too.
- black_13 4mo ago[dead]
- squidbeak 4mo agoMany parents in particular set up cameras to keep an eye on infants - without understanding just how insecure those cameras are. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51706631 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51706631
- bee_rider 4mo agoIt’s your house, so fine I guess. How do you support that decision? A little “terms-and-conditions for entering,” posted on the doors, or something?
- jsLavaGoat 4mo agoSomeone should train models to generate clickbait using this.
- IndySun 4mo agoA thought experiment. Cameras everywhere, zero privacy, some murders. No cameras anywhere, total privacy, probably more murders. If cameras everywhere meant zero crime, would you be for it? Can cameras everywhere ever equate to no crime ever; I don't think so. There's some serious pre-crime notions here too.
- TimByte 4mo ago[dead]