Privacy. Hmmm. What's that?
You might very well ask.
Privacy and The Right to Remain Anonymous are legal and social norms defined by people. Dogs don't have a right to privacy as anyone who has ever taken a dog out to "do his duty" can attest, but humans often "look away" just the same. Livestock have no choice about where they live or under what conditions; humans decide when, where and how they eat, sleep and reproduce. Even our "new zoos" use pervasive data acquisition in the pretense that they will learn something about the incarcerated animals they hold in various size pens, none of which are anywhere near the size of the animals' normal habitat.
Privacy is: What's in the eye of the beholder.
There are legal definitions that vary around the world and having to update our blog's "Privacy Policy" is just another tick in the box of "privacy compliance" requirements. Of course telling you about your privacy is rather "odd", as is our requirement to try to inform you about what is or isn't happening. By now, Mark Zuckerberg's infamous statement that "privacy is dead" appears to be a fait accompli. Just the same, we have to tell you about the ways in which your privacy has vanished.
There is no way we can tell you all, because we don't know "all". We know "some". We published our 2017 Privacy Policy Statement in December 2016 1. Within weeks, some new ways your privacy has been compromised were reported.
Data Harvesting was originally focused on the individual. Who you are, what you do, where you go and most important what you buy and why. After gathering much of that information, the Data Harvesters moved on to the people around you: family, children, friends, co-workers. They have gathered quite a bit about this aspect too. Now, they are moving towards harvesting data from people you do not know.
This may seem weird but what you don't know is actually more important that what you do know. One aspect of this is: "if you don't know" you might be more persuaded to Do X or Buy Y or Believe Z. Another phrase for this is:
There's a sucker born every minute...
The Data Harvested is combined by Data Aggregators into ginormous lumps which are sold to: Anyone Who Has Money.
- All roads lead to Rome
- All data leads to Money
Being able to combine data from various sources is one way to fill in the blanks or to show where the blanks are, like missing pieces of a jigsaw.
What DOES Alexa know?
- What does Alexa know?
- How DO you serve a warrant on an AI device?
- If it's AI where does the Artificial split from the Intelligence?
Reports of a homicide, detailed that an Alexa AI device, which is similar to the Siri AI device, was "in the vicinity" of the homicide. The police believe the AI device may have "heard something". This is because the device is "always on" and while it's supposed to be listening for a command word like: Alexa change the channel or Alexa play for me, it sometimes turns on "by accident". This accidental data is stored and forwarded.
There are 2 places that can store the captured audio data: a) it can be stored "in the cloud" and b) it can be stored in the audio buffer on the device. Think about this last part a bit. The device needs to store "some" part of your conversation in case you use Reverse Polish like Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Tea, Earl Grey, Hot. The so-called AI device cannot make tea until it knows the last part of the command. It has to store some quantity of speech until it gets enough "intelligence" to either make the tea or decides you don't what the tea at all.
- Tea, Earl Grey, Hot
- Tea, Earl Grey, Hot, Not
So questioning Alexa is of prime importance! If Alexa refuses to answer on the basis of being an Artificial entity, they can always strip her down to her bare chips and PEEK that way.
Another possible witness to the crime is "The Smart Meter" installed by the utility company. A large part of the population in urban areas have these "smart meters" installed. Their "smart" part is in making all the Human Meter Readers redundant while allowing the automation of utility billing systems. Since these meters provide precise data about your utility use, they can be very helpful. Were the lights on at 3AM? Did you wash the car or take a shower at 3AM? Or maybe, you were washing the victim's blood off the porch as noted by the large amount of water usage recorded by the Smart Meter at 3AM?
This line of questioning and rebuttal could become common.
- A red light camera captures and logs your image 300 miles away from the time in question (allowing for time zone differences) but only if you can find the right city, jurisdiction or tow truck service that holds images from their face recognition and ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) programs to prove it.
- Or, possibly, the red light camera captured and logged your image within 10 minutes of the locale in question; your cell phone's dictation and speech recognition system captured the evening's dialogue while live streaming the encounter and the nearby Alexa/Siri recorded and uploaded the damning details.
The perfect witnesses? Sounds good!!
Recently, while comparing conflicting local weather reports with friends, no two smartphones could agree on the next day's weather. It was either going to be raining (iPhone) or sunny (not iPhones)2, a friend quipped:
"To each his own smartphone technology"
If a "smart" phone can't even report the weather which it retrieves from the cloud, when anyone with a IDIOT device can turn on your watering system from "way over yonder", when security is a NULL for every internet connection and database, plus there are legions of billing errors claimed by utilities and corporations as legitimate charges, and when even time is doubtful, it might not be such a good idea to equate the "intelligence" part of Artificial Intelligence with "reality".
As to your privacy.. you have none.
But you can start working on that...
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| Hyperface Anti-Surveillance Textile Pattern Photograph: Adam Harvey |
1. Our Privacy Policy Update 2017: You Have None
2. The "not iPhones" were correct: it was sunny
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