The government will use smart home devices for spying

The director of national intelligence James Clapper said that the internet of things – the many devices like thermostats, cameras and other appliances that are increasingly connected to the internet – are providing ample opportunity for intelligence agencies to spy on targets, and possibly the masses.
"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 told a Senate panel as part of his annual "assessment of threats" against the US.
Basically he admitted that smart devices would be used for spying, but the real horror is that many consumers who buy these devices may be unaware of these "capabilities" they didn't signed for.

http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...art-devices-spying-surveillance-us-government

Thanks. I'll keep my home "dumb".

 

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If people are not aware that *anything* connected to the internet can be hacked, they should be.

 

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When people get so indolent that they need an internet refrigerator that can notify them either outside on its door or via smartphone what items are in there and which need to be bought or resupplied, discarded by date, etc... It's time for the original human species to hang it up and become transhuman blobs floating around all day in hot tubs, attended by robots.

 

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I want the government to control the deployment of live rounds of ammo. Turn them off by remote control.

 

TV sets now also come with microphones ... but well, that's redundant since each cell phone can do that already.

Lamps also come with microphones for some reason ... google didn't give me agood product link, but this might giv a hint:
http://www.amazon.com/VOCCA-Smart-Lights-Activated-Adapter/dp/B00T1UTMP4

 

Hell, there are some people so indolent they can't be bothered to walk to work, chop wood for heat or milk their own cows. (You don't know anyone like that, do you?)

 

All my devices with cameras, except for my phone, have tape over the lense.

 

I want to believe that's overkill, but in my state a school spied on kids using Web cams and screencaps in school issued laptops at home. The school was so clueless about what privacy means that they actually tried to discipline a student for conduct at home. Needless to say they got sued and lost, but shockingly there was no criminal case.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District

 

And amazingly got by for decades without turning their vehicles, chainsaws, and milking machines into another remotely invadable device. Such barbarians they must seem to millennials and those "OMG, my communications are down and I'm cut off from the hive-mind and daycare culture; Christ I may be an isolated, independent, forced-to-think-and-do-for-itself entity for a whole hour or more" crisis moments.

 

Chainsaws? Vehicles? Tell me there aren't people who are so indolent they need a mechanized "thing" to chop down a tree or get to work! Axes and feet worked for centuries.

 

Amen to that.

The last few years I've been doing what I can to stay 'off the grid', so to speak.

I'm very aware of my handful of internet and cell connections and what kind of information passes through them. Keeping track of that is relatively easy for me, since much of the technology I use is decades old. Most of my communications are face-to-face and I usually shop in stores. I try to operate in cash as much as possible and typically use public transportation.

In the current political climate, I don't trust the government at all. (And its intrusions on individual liberty are only going to get worse.) I don't trust companies like Google either. (Sometimes it reminds me of a private NSA-ish intelligence agency.) I try to have as little contact with the ruling elites as possible and don't intentionally leave lots of bread-crumb trails for them to follow.

I'm not paranoid enough to think that they are actively watching me. I'm not interesting enough. But I don't like the idea that if they ever do get interested in me, somebody in Washington DC can punch up a detailed dossier on every tiny detail of anyone's life with just a few key clicks. (They are trying to develop that ability.) I want the screen that comes up on me to have as little information on it as possible.

 

My transit card knows where I go.

 

True. I have a regional transit card too, but don't use it very often. Oftentimes I don't have it on me. So I just stick cash in the fare box.

The new RFID cards can track you even when you aren't using them. So I don't carry credit cards around with me either. (I started not carrying lots of cards because I didn't want to lose them if I lost my wallet.) I guess that I'll have to look into getting one of those RFID shielding wallets.

 

I have one, but mostly because it's a hard case that I can sit on without damaging my cards. I never even had a bank card until a couple of years ago but now I need one to get paid.