It seems oddly fitting that this week — a week scarred by the bizarre and violent mass murder in San Bernardino — that I received a LinkedIn invitation to connect with someone who listed this as their job description:
Install, maintain, and repair GPS, WiFi, and security camera systems on tour buses. In 2010, working with grant money from Homeland Security, I installed security systems on a fleet of tour buses and I have been maintaining those systems since then. In 2011, I helped install multi-language listening systems on tour buses and have been the lead maintenance technician. Currently, I am project manager for upgrading a fleet of 50 tour buses with new GPS systems using Homeland Security grant monies. This requires coordinating with engineers of service providers to solve unusual, complex problems.
None of this should surprise me, yet still it does. I didn’t know Homeland Security was listening-in like that, did you?
And since they evidently are listening, shouldn’t they have told this guy to be quiet about it?
There is no presumption of privacy riding in a tour bus, so it probably isn’t illegal to listen-in. Bus security cameras and their footage have been around for years now and appear regularly on TV news after bus crimes. But there’s something about this idea of not only our actions being recorded but also our words that I find disturbing. It’s especially so when we consider the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT). What other devices will soon be snitching on us?
Innocent people have nothing to fear, we’ll be told, but with smart phones and smart watches and smart homes and smart refrigerators and cars with their own continuous LTE links how far can we be from every one of us carrying a listening device? It happened already in a Batman movie, where Bruce Wayne hacked all the phones in Gotham City, leading to the protest resignation of Morgan Freeman as Batman’s tech guy. If something like this were to happen with the real telephone system, who would be our Morgan Freeman? I’m guessing nobody.
Then there’s Big Data fever. Everyone wants bigger data sets to justify more computers to analyze them. Every data center director since the first one was built has wanted more processors, memory, and storage. If we’re moving to listening in every language the processing power required will be huge — another boon for the cloud.
One thing that struck me watching on TV the aftermath of the San Bernardino attack was how our first responders have changed. Not only do the police now have tanks, but a third of the big black SUVs parked outside the Inland Regional Center were identified by the helicopters flying above as belonging to the Department of Homeland Security, those very grant-givers from LinkedIn. It’s a whole new layer of bureaucracy that will probably never go away.
I talked recently to the developer of a phone app that could, by using your smartphone mic as you drive, tell you when a tire is about to fail. In one sense it’s a brilliant application, but if your phone can hear clearly enough the difference between a good tire and a bad one then it can hear a lot of other things, too. I can only imagine what the back seat of my first car — a 1966 Oldsmobile — would have heard and reported on if we’d had this capability back in the day.
But the march of technological progress is inevitable so most of this will come to pass. And the fact that we have literal armies of hackers all over the world devoted to cracking networks suggests that once such a listening capability exists for any purpose someone will find a way to exploit it for every purpose.
Then life will become like an episode of Spy versus Spy from the Mad Magazine of our childhood with consumers buying technology to protect themselves. Tell me your kid won’t want that bug-sweeping app or the one that spoofs the insurance company GPS into thinking the car isn’t speeding after all.
And where will that leave us other than paranoid and in constant need of AA batteries? It won’t improve our quality of life, that’s for sure, and I’m willing to bet it won’t save many lives, either.
“And where will that leave us other than paranoid and in constant need of AA batteries? It won’t improve our quality of life, that’s for sure, and I’m willing to bet it won’t save many lives, either.”
But it will make a certain set of people a TON of money.
Interesting.
I bought a TV last week, a Smart TV.
I don’t want all those special features so I did not mess with getting it to connect with my WiFi… but is it cracking my connection and listening in anyway? Probably.
Probably not. Aside from the increased cost to do and then follow up by absorbing the data, there are plenty of tech-savy people who would check to see what it’s doing, report the issue to the press, blemishing the reputation of the company, causing a recall and apology. This has already happened with computers sending innocent background info to the company or making other behavior changes to the system to reduce the likelihood of other software messing with their drivers.
I tend to agree with you overall but disagree with the cost prohibitive bit. I had assumed that as well but times have changed. Most of the work would be done by the smart tv and stored until requested. Even if it is sent immediately it’s still not cost prohibitive.
For example: Vizio was just sued because they were sending local network drive file listings back to Vizio. It also “watched” a section of the tv screen do produce a signature from which it could discern what you were watching. This would be illegal for a cable company to do but not, as the law is written, for a TV manufacturer. You as a customer paid for all that processing… they just soaked back in the good bits.
Sorry, but you are the exception to constant network connectivity.
Everyone in my family who has a smart TV have asked me to set up YouTube, Netflix, … etc.
They can’t imagine not having these and more on the TV. They feel that the smart phone is a nice thing, but the smart TV is the real deal.
Only the GPS and Security Systems are mentioned as being installed with Homeland Security money. Wouldn’t the “multi-language listening systems” be the headphone ports with a channel selector found in the armrests or on the wall on many tour buses? Channel 1, hear the tour narration in English. Channel 2, Spanish. Etc…
During a recent trip in a rental car, I tried to flip the switch on the rear-view mirror to dark (tailgator had bright headlights). The button for OnStar was right next to the toggle on the mirror and I accidentally pushed it while moving the mirror. Next thing I know, there’s a womans voice asking me if I need help. Having never used OnStar, my reply was of course, “What?”
After explaining the situation, we ended the conversation. Sure, my in-car conversation about engineering software or singing along with the radio would probably bore OnStar operators to tears, but it made me wonder if they can listen without drivers knowing.
Vigorous driving can also trigger the OnStar communications link. If the car sees you exceed the predetermined g limits, it assumes you’ve been in an accident and places a call. The next thing you’ll hear is “Remain calm, we are contacting emergency services for you.” “What??”
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And yes, they can listen without the driver being aware. It’s sometimes used during a stolen-vehicle report prior to them shutting off the engine to be sure they’ve got the right car.
This has already happened, sort of:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/car-calls-911-after-alleged-hit-and-run-driver-arrested/
Yes, FBI has used Onstar, with warrants, to listen in on suspects.
Do you have a citation for that? And would this be legal for any Onstar equipped car, or only one whether there’s an Onstar service agreement? The difference is that for the latter, the agreement will cover the LE use, but without that any external access is surely illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
’66 Olds? Now I know the answer to your secret question….
For someone who doesn’t want the new TV to go a-spyin’, there’s three threat models to consider:
1. Business: The TV manufacturer, content provider, content deliverer wanting to model the consumer(s) for commercial purposes.
2. One or more governments hoovering as much general citizen profiling data as possible.
3. A government or criminal actor specifically targeting you for intel.
Threat 1. can only go so far without being caught (Sony rootkit etc) because the spying is not concealed due to ubiquity, so very likely to be spotted.
Threat 2. is limited by public opinion, when the extent leaks (Snowden etc).
Threat 3. is only really limited, for remote (low cost) intrusion, by the end-user’s hardware.
So if some hardware capable of spying is disabled from spying merely by software, it is vulnerable to Threat 3. Take peter’s TV. It’s just software that stops the WiFi module hacking WEP/WPA2 networks around it to get a route, because peter’s router won’t let the TV through to the WAN. An NSL can’t force Sony to do this to your TV, but the Japanese gov. probably could get it done. A MitM attack could get a different firmware image upgrade regardless.
We’ve come a long way…..first, it used to be my refrigerator CALLING me late at nite when (admittedly after an unneeded number of bottles of wine consumed) it knew I really wanted to come eat that entire frozen large pepperoni pizza before bed.
In that case, it was I who listened to my fridge. It was only the next morning, groaning with hangover and indigestion, that my refrigerator switched modes and began listening to me: “Oh, my aching head and stomach,” I told it. And the fridge really did listen to my groans of pain, with empathy and a nice pat on the back telling me the pain was just temporary and everything’s gonna be okay….and by the way, open up my door and I have a nice cold Alka Seltzer waiting inside for you.
Now THAT’S a “listening” refrigerator that I can live with. All the other listening junk that Homeland security wants to install in the things/machines we use in our daily life…..well, maybe we should have a nice bonfire for all that crap. Or at least learn how to disable/disassemble the listening microphones and cameras inside it. And certainly disable the wi-fi connection. I tell my daughters that the first thing they should do when they buy a new laptop is put a piece of cardboard over the embedded camera lens and only take it off when they specifically WANT to be filmed. Can’t seem to get ’em to do it…..like all late teen/20-somethings, they seem to want to live their live online.
Not to denigrate the veracity of the story you tell, Cringe, about the guy in the LinkedIN bio, but I suspect it may not be what it is…..I don’t think anyone (Homeland security included) can force anyone in a private owned business to install spying devices on his machines for use on the general public and, even if these are tour buses used by a commercial touring company, the tour owner would have to be aware of it and let the passengers know. Any owner of a private vehicle would have to give permission for someone to install after-market cameras, microphones and tracking devices on some businesses private property….you can’t just sneakily “do” it.
In other words, although your point about overly-excessive government spying on private citizens in general IS valid and IS a problem we have to worry about (and attempt to restrain), I think that spying still manifests itself thru public means….such as listening in and data mining (at that giant center in Utah) of our emails and phone conversations, cameras located everywhere on street corners filming and recording us in public, intimidating cell phone carriers to turn over records, etc.
Private devices, purchased and used by individuals, will never be reliable spying devices because we can always disable the spying capability, even if it means just snipping a wire.
I think we’d need more info on the specific situation of this guy’s employment….it sounds like these listening devices were installed on buses that might be Homeland security buses themself? The circumstances seem a bit confusing.
I didn’t write that they were forced. They were apparently PAID to do it (that Homeland Security grant money).
Companies that provide public interstate travel have been gently forced to use certain “homing” technologies in order to keep their state, federal and ICC certifications, just like carriers need to be friends with the NSA to remain as carriers. A few year’s back, one of these types of companies panicked when their drivers went on strike and moved their rigs underneath overpasses and disappeared from surveillance.
That’s why I use any one of three non-smart flip phones I store at night in steel boxes and drive a 1980’s “restored car” and an old F150 (pre-1993) and have my house lined with Tempest IV resistant brass/steel chain-link mesh.
Fortune 100’s learned their lesson when Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio was jailed by the feds on questionable at best charges after he refused to friend the NSA.
Better make that a LEAD box (or a Faraday cage) for the flip phones…..or just take the battery out.
“Private devices, purchased and used by individuals, will never be reliable spying devices because we can always disable the spying capability, even if it means just snipping a wire.”
Do you seriously believe that? I mean, yeah, you can turn off your phone… but there’s a reason security conscious people go so far as to remove the batteries… and how often do you do that? What about viruses on your home computer… watching for you to log in to facebook, email or your bank?
As far as being forced or not.. security letters come to mind: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/09/AR2010080906252.html
Since it was a “grant” — it may have simply come with the monitoring strings (wireless, but still strings) attached.
Robert, I think you may be showing your age, and/or, possibly a lack of tech savy.
Come on, your phone is listening to the sounds of your tires? Really? How many different, and subtle sounds do you think all the different tire brands make? Also are your windows up or down, is the radio on, or maybe your air conditioner/heater is running? How is a phone app going to differentiate between all these various “sound” situations, and then give you accurate diagnostic information, regarding the wear on your tires? Just guessing, but I think the follow information may be more to the “diagnostic information” point!
A lot of tire manufactures are “chipping’ their tires. Supposedly, so your vehicle’s on-board computer can, or will be able to, determine what your tire wear is. Now, my guess is, that this type of “detection technology” is probably not limited to “only” detecting your tire’s wear. You might want to take a look at this article regarding what a Korean tire manufacturer is doing. And I know other tire manufactures are also doing the same. See: https://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?10880 (It explains a lot, doesn’t it.)
You also mentioned “It’s a whole new layer of (Department of Homeland Security) bureaucracy that will probably never go away. I’ll tell you what, you better hope it doesn’t go away. At least, not until all of these irrational attacks, and the attackers are neutralized. The current level of government snooping may be one of the few things that will actually help protect us. If you’re not doing anything illegal, why should you really be all that spun up about your own current privacy? Especially, if the government’s eavesdropping might be saving yours, and others you love, lives.
Don’t get me wrong, the idea of “Big Brother” looking over my shoulder is un-nerving, and when I first heard about it, I was appalled. But with recent events, I’m been modified my thinking. And, until all this global terrorism can be eliminated, for me, it’s really kind of a small price to pay.
FYI: I’m a “Centracrat” (if that’s a word): I will lean left, right, or a combination of both, depending on the specifics of the political discussion. With regards to terrorism, I’m a HAWK!
I believe you, along with a lot of others, miss the point about why some of us are so upset about government snooping.
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Sure, you say that people who aren’t doing anything illegal have nothing to worry about. However, that assumes that no one who has (or illegally gains) access to the snooping systems will ever use them to target people not because of illegal activity but because of some political, business, or personal reason. Or, in the future, an abusive group might gain control of the government and use the snooping capabilities to counter attempts of the public to regain control of the government.
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You MUST always think of how a capability might be misused, then decide whether the risk of misuse is worth the benefit. You and I might come to different conclusions about the risk vs. reward, but we must consciously take the risk vs. reward into account, in public debate, when deciding whether to authorize such things.
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(How do you insert paragraph breaks in this comment system?)
I’ll let others respond about the snooping but the tire audio part is 100 percent correct. More than one big tire company sees this capability as something that can be sold to fleet operators where the fleet owner also pays for the telephone. Nobody said it is easy but it does work and patents have been applied for.
I am on Bob’s side here. I was telling my ex-wife that I was very close to needing new tires. No, I never looked at them. I could tell by how much they howled going down the highway. And I did not know the brand. That’s not important. Part of the tread of a tire is to help take away some of the sounds. Like a very low-tech form of sound cancellation. As the tread gets lower and lower the tires losses the ability to be quite. And YES… the ride home from the tire store with new tires was very quite indeed. It seems quite reasonable to teach an app to look our for this kind of howling. Although… if you have those mud tires on your semi-off road truck… expect the app to say you need new tires. Those tires howl all the time.
I long for the days before cell phones, when a stranger walks up to me and says “your tires are bald”.
Scott, that’s quiet, not quite.
Don’t miss this news:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.07035
A similar idea but using the audio processing to tell just how wet the roads are for self-driving vehicles.
IoT? smart crap? I can enter my access point and block those damn things when and if I find them.
notice just today of yet another 3 year old set of wide open doors in the uPnP toolkit used in so, so many “smart” devices, unpatched, and the manufacturers don’t give a rip.
if I do accidentally get a “smart” device instead of one that just sits there and works for 15 to 20 years, rest assured, I’m blocking it from the internet. might as well knock the doors and windows out.
@swschrad: Difficult to trust the factory access point firmware though, innit?
Or, for that matter, any neighbors’ access points within range.
Just like that little dark window on the cable box. You thought it was just the IR receiver behind it, not a camera. And there you sit right in front of it in your underware. Or less.
Hmm, underware. So if there’s firmware and software, pr’aps underware is the code at the bottom level of a protocol stack?
Quote: “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what is going on”. William Burroughs.
Quote: “Even if you are NOT paranoid, it does not mean that they are not out to get you.” Unknown.
…..and the Burroughs quote — written by a genius — MANY MANY years before IoT.
can anyone say 1984
A third of a billion people in the country.
They cannot possibly listen to all talk, all the time. They have to have suspicion first.
But make sure to run a background feed of My Little Pony bondage porn and occasionally reference the “secret messages” you get through it.
Who is “they”? A bunch of computers. And they can listen for trigger words, and store, index, and catalog a crapload of data, including voiceprints for identification. So if someone decides they want to search all your conversations for certain key words, easy-peasy. I’m not saying this is happening, but it’s certainly possible.
Just wait until you hear about the new developments at Ducati. We are testing an iPhone/iPad app that when placed on your handlebars will tell you your speed, rpm, gear that you are in, headlight/ turn signal indications, and direction. You wont need gauges anymore.
Not only that, it has fingerprint recognition. Only you can start you bike with this app. It also diagnoses your entire bike – engine valve clearance, brake wear, tire wear, etc.
BUT – this the real cool part – you can modify the engine performance curve on the fly. Want more torque? Press a button. Better mileage – press a button. It does this all by listening to the bike.
Pretty cool, huh?
🙂
Well, lets hope you can get a vintage ’15 iPhone to go with your vintage Ducati in thirty years time, otherwise you won’t be going anywhere.
horse-drawn carriage > horseless carriage > driverless carriage (19th>20th>21st century)
Yeah, cool. People screwing around with a smart phone while riding a motorcycle. Can’t see how that could lead to anything bad. And you know, every time I ride I find myself thinking: “Damn gauges! If only I could lose them and have to strap a phone to the top triple clamps and get it talking to the bike’s electronics everything would be right with the world. Hey, maybe they could incorporate the brakes, throttle, clutch and gearchange controls into the phone too so I could work those via the touch screen!” 🙂
Re: “I helped install multi-language listening systems on tour buses”. When I read that, I thought it was something perfectly innocent. A multi-language listening system on a tour bus could mean a multichannel headphone worn by passengers, which would be set to the language that the passenger understands. The same description of the sites the tour bus is driving past, only in multiple languages chosen by the listener. For Example “TGS PRO Multi-user One-way Systems The TGS PRO FM systems from Williams Sound are available in single channel and multi-channel packages. It is one of the most versatile and economical solutions for providing hearing assistance in multi-language environments where confidentiality is not an issue.” https://www.centrumsound.com/Translation_Systems.html
I think you’re failing to consider audio recording consent laws here. These vary from state to state, but you generally need at least the consent of one party to record a face to face conversation. For example, operators of various security cameras have run afoul these laws, not because video recording is illegal, but because the audio track also recorded is illegal.
Let the entrepreneurs take note! There will be a niche market in dumbed down appliances. All sorts of non-invasive goods and disconnecting services will be upscale markets in the next few years.
One recent innovation is the “walk in fridge.” Not to be confused with the “walkin’ fridge”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk5JNs7KO30
Not to be confused with Christopher Walken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ7z57qrZU8
That would be analog! Cool! The Luddites will prevail in good time….
I’d be happy to share my health kit data with my health insurance provider if they were actually interested in my health. But the last thing they’re interested in is helping me be healthier. A few years ago our company insurance started making us declare our smoker status. If someone says they are a smoker, they have to pay an extra $50/month for the privilege. Non-smokers don’t get a lower rate since we’re no longer grouped in with the smokers, so basically the insurance company just makes an extra $600/yr on smokers. And because smoking-caused diseases generally don’t manifest themselves until retirement age, the insurance company just pockets the money and dumps the smoker off on Medicare.
In an alternative universe, I imagine that $25K average per family spent on health insurance being used to pay for a dietitian, personal trainer, and proactive diagnostic testing and health monitoring by a company that actually exists to keep me healthy instead of paying for someone to clean up the mess after I screw up.
That’s largely what health savings accounts did, since they now have an incentive to keep you from cashing in, while you are paying a high deductible, encouraging you to keep costs down.
The government would actually profit the more people smoked.
Re: “The government would actually profit the more people smoked.” What about Eric’s comment that the government pays for smokers with Medicare?
[…] I, Cringely […]
Has it occurred to you that the multilanguage listening was not for the passengers, but the street?
Who’s listening to whom?
What seems obvious to me, Ronc, is that Homeland Security would have no vested interest in helping tour bus companies talk TO their passengers in multiple languages. That’s not to say such products don’t exist (you prove that) but the innate interest of DHS simply has to be in recording audio, not promoting tourism.
If I’m reading it correctly, it sounds like he was working on the Homeland Security “security system” in 2010. Then in 2011, he helped install a listening system w/o mentioning if that later project involved Homeland Security. One was a “security system” the other was a “listening system”. Perhaps one of us should contact him: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-key-a683852a .
And let’s not forget that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Let’s just say that it’s not by accident that a notable percentage of the world’s storage device production goes into nondescript government buildings.
@ I can only imagine what the back seat of my first car — a 1966 Oldsmobile — would have heard and reported on if we’d had this capability back in the day.
“i’m mary j. kopechne. let me out!”?
n.b. all the high tech spy apparatus at government disposale didn’t stop the adherents of the religion of pieces from vibrantly enriching san bernardino. perhaps it exists for other purposes?
Thought that name sounded familiar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Jo_Kopechne
“We must ask ourselves – are we truly alone or are we being lied to?” Fox Mulder. The X-Files is returning for six episodes starting January 16. Nice…..
After a while I got so sick of Mulder I was rooting for CSM.
I am not so worried about the alphabet soup agencies as corporations spying on us. What is in ChoicePoint (now called NexisLexis Risk Solutions) databases? How about Googles? I seem to vagely remember an article back in the old Toad days that IE packets were being routed through Microsoft servers before going on to the net.
Technology is a two edge sword.
Speaking of listening to your conversations, Google got busted (theguardian June 23, 2015) for downloading listening software on to everyone’s computer who has the Chrome browser.
Have a read of the RIPA Act (for the UK)…………….aka “The Snoopers Charter”. Gives food for thought……when the act was passed in 2000 only 9 organizations had access to communications records. By 2007 there were over half a million requisitions for communications data from telephone companies and ISP’s alone. Amazing how some folks are willing to give up their privacy and freedoms when others have given their lives in order to protect them or at least give us the choice.
I know how it is to try and work on something, only to get interrupted and asked about it constantly, and I know this is irrelevant to this topic, but there have been no updates in regards to the Mineserver kickstarter. There have been updates here, however, so we were hoping to hear something over on kickstarter.
Look for IoT to eventually end up being an invasive extension of the principle of “you are the product”, similar to all of the “free” offerings currently available on the Internet.
I think it is only a matter of time until our household appliances are fitted with data recorders, and law enforcement will be able use them in an investigation of a crime. Your accuser in court could be your refrigerator.
We\re not alone in our fears of being spied upon. Now the fish in a stream are seeing their privacy being invaded. What’s the world coming to?
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http://fishingfancam.com/
This seem pertinent to this conversation: https://www.wired.com/2015/08/verizon-hum/
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I have an ODB-2 reader in my tool box. (With 4 kids and 6-7 cars it is almost a necessity.) It would be convenient if when the car was in the garage I could check the vehicle data. It would be nice to have a software tool that could help me better manage the maintenance on the cars. (With teenage drivers it would be nice to see how fast the car was driven.)
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We all have access to real time traffic data on our smartphones. It is nice to know about an accident and be able to route our trip around it. How does our map service know there is a traffic issue ahead of us? While we are out driving around the movement of our cell phones along major roads is being monitored. Knowing how long my phone is in the range of a single tower, before being switched to the next tower allows one to calculate the flow of traffic.
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Today the “system” knows there are 100 cars on a particular section of highway xyz moving at 45 mph. Today I can turn on the “locate” service on our cell phone plan and find out one of my cars is one of those cars on that section of highway xyz. Today I can allow some popular Internet services know my whereabouts 24×7. Today some popular Internet services know my whereabouts 24×7 without my permission or knowledge.
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The question really becomes — when should others have access to the information in my car? One of the big issues we’re going to need to consider is — do we get a tool to allow us to manage the release of data in the upcoming era of the Internet-of-Things? It will be nice for ME to have better access to the data on things in MY life. I will want to control the access of that same data to OTHERS.
And even if it is possible to configure every IoT device in your house to your data access preferences, there’s still the problem of execution. You will have a lot of devices to configure, and there may be some things that are IoT devices that you aren’t even aware of or forgot about.
If your IoT device records something that might incriminate you in a crime or other wrongdoing, deleting the data just makes it worse. Better to not have it record anything at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampering_with_evidence
At the risk of showing my age…back in the 1980’s I worked for a large company. Back then copy machines were large and complicated, and we had people to run them. One of my friends was a copy machine operator. As part of a “special assignment” she spent almost a year in a closed off, secure room making copies of every company document involved in a big corporate law suit.
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In that mountain of documents my friend copied were memo’s between employees making jokes about the product involved in the suit. To any normal person the comments were obviously nothing more than jokes. However to crafty lawyers they were used against the company. The company had to go through great pains to show the employees were not involved in the product, were not experts in the health issues, were not involved in the decision making process, … It was a brutal, painful court case.
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As a result of this experience the company enacted a new corporate policy — document retention. If there was not a legal or business reason to retain something, all documents over a year old were to be destroyed. Twice a year we had a “document retention day” People came to work in jeans and spent the day going through every file cabinet and box in the company. Later in the 80’s as more and more stuff was in electronic files and email, we implemented processes to purge documents there too.
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Fast forward about 10 years and there was Enron. As a result of corporate crimes by firms like Enron the laws were changed and now companies pretty much have to keep everything.
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My point is this — over time attitudes and laws will change over the storage and retention of data.
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Yesterday someone was killed in a traffic accident near me. She was stopped at a traffic light waiting to make a turn. Someone on the cross street veered out of his lane and hit her. Was he intoxicate? Was he distracted? The authorities are investigating the accident and the data from both cars is being examined. Their cell phones are being examined too. The examination of the “data” will provide a lot of information for the investigation. Then there is the next series of questions… Was this a one time incident for the driver? Or was this one of many times this driver has veered out of his lane? Is there a history of this problem?
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This is an example how the laws could change to require us to keep all that IoT data. From a privacy and cyber crime perspective the IoT scares the crap out of me. We really, really need to define personal rights for this technology FIRST, before we implement it. We need to establish standards and the tools that will allow people to manage and control THEIR data. If we do nothing this will be a problem and legal battle for years to come. In my short career, I’ve seen this problem go through the process 3 times. If we don’t learn from history, we will repeat it again.
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Point well taken. Name “document retention day” sounds like it comes from 1984 doublespeak, since it means “document purge day”. When they had a big layoff, I suppose they called it “employee retention day”.
Recently published a satirical novel about the IT industry. Thought perhaps it might interest the Cringeworthy crowd.
See my blog for a sample chapter.
http://leeledge.blogspot.com/2015/12/digging-up-new-businessthe-swiftpad.html
Formerly Blue
O, smart new world that hath such people in’t!
I just wish they’d have come up with some word other than “smart”. Because it ain’t necessarily so…
Well we have unimaginable amounts of data being accumulated. Progress is being made regarding big data, but the more big data advances, the greater the demand for raw data. So a positive feedback loop. The existence of hacking – criminal, political, terrorist (Isn’t ISIS one of the great success stories in the ‘Net?), monkey-wrenching – undermines the integrity of the data collected. And, of course, the Second Law cannot be evaded.
Doesn’t all of this pretty much create radical asymmetries of information/dis-information and render the notion of rational markets null?
I can’t grasp where this will end: apocalypse? Or should we just “surrender to hermeneutic suspicion,” to quote Helen Vendler.
I guess I am the only one who finds the assumption that a conversation on a bus in not presumed to be private. Why the heck not? If I talk to you I am talking to you, not everyone unless I choose to raise my voice. From my perspective anyone actively listening to my conversation other than to whom it is intended is eavesdropping.
With Stinger systems being used, even turning off your phone is no longer enough to prevent intrusion by others and since they have no oversight we are living in a police state. I find it interesting that most of the sheeple are willing to be monitored by the government in order to give the illusion they are preventing terrorism even though the chances of dying in a terrorist attack is still less than being struck by lightning. By that measure we should have demanded the government install lightning rods every 50 feet from coast to coast years ago.
Re:”the chances of dying in a terrorist attack” I’m not worried about dying, I’m worried about living through one. I wonder what odds you’re waiting for before we should start doing something.