University of Essex Professor Vic Callaghan has a paper addressing issues of privacy and intelligent environments. In his review of a video on the subject he notes:
I just watched the video of your talk “Open Source Physical Security: Can we have both privacy and safety?“.
I think you raise a number of very important points about the potential for misuse of technology. I research in pervasive computing (Intelligent Environments, Pervasive Sensing, Digital Homes, Smart Homes etc) having previously been heavily involved in robotics. In this work I became aware of how technology could be misused, in a similar way to the nanotechnology you describe. We became so concerned that we gave a talk to the UN (as we felt it needed legislation or guidance at a very high level). More recently we wrote this up as an academic paper which suffered some opposition and modification before we were able to find and outlet willing to publish it (its a rather unpopular message). We are mainstream researchers in intelligent environments, that spent most of our life promoting this technology so it was, perhaps, a little unusual that we wrote an article that might be counter to its unfettered deployment.
Although I do not think the UN is going to have the effect he would wish, the worries he expresses are ones we all need consider. The era of ubiquitous sensing has already begun.
PS: Watch the referenced Christine Peterson video for a good summary of the right way to approach this problem (and not just because she’s a very old friend of mine!)
Wow. That was absolutely fascinating.
Anyone who does not understand what sensing is all about (like me) should watch the video with Chris Peterson.
Just amazing and the implications for privacy are truly frightening. I’m glad that a load of smart people are taking an interest in this.
Well, his heart is in the right place but the trouble with this is… it is legislators and people who want to ‘guide’ things at a very high level that are the problem, rather than the people to go to seeking a solution.
The true issue here is not how individuals or companies use technology, it is how force backed control obsessed nation states use technology… so forgive me if I do not place much faith in the UN, which is a talking shop of nation states, making this problem go away.
These are the very people who are the problem.
Sorry, this is sort of spam, but I just want this terrible story to be seen by as many like-minded people as possible. It’s a story of a family destroyed by social services, courtesy of Christopher Booker.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5858902/Evil-destruction-of-a-happy-family.html
I agree with Perry that government is very certainly a large part of the problem, especially those which routinely demand monitoring inclusions when authorizing the instillation of information systems.
But there are two positive aspects to this situation.
First, government cadres are every bit as incompetent in designing and installing new, powerful computer systems as they are at doing anything else.
I recall a recent article about the attempted upgrading of the computer systems for the American Internal Revenue Service, which described a ten year long fiasco which finally was being abandoned because it couldn’t be made to work.
Similar problems have plagued other state agencies over the years.
But that doesn’t mean that state sponsored snoops will give up, indeed, given the present climate of increasing statism, they will probably increase their efforts.
And that leads us to a promising avenue of argument, not only in this particular case, but against the burgeoning state in general.
Too many of the debates between individualists and collectivists end up end up mired in hair-splitting arguments about the meaning of this graph or that group of statistics.
But here is a topic which is of great interest to almost all of the younger people in society, who use informational and communications technology on a daily basis without even thinking about any other mode of accomplishing their tasks.
I know my own children do everything from buying cars to movie tickets online, and all have facebook pages. My youngest was just telling my wife he sent birthday greetings to his older brother’s facebook page, so he didn’t need to get a birthday card.
This, then, is a ready made audience for the argument that strict limits on the powers of the state to monitor the activities, and infringe on the privacy and liberties, of the citizenry is needed for very clear and basic reasons.
We are caught in a situation in which several generations have been raised and educated in the belief that government is expected, and needed, to take on an increasing amount of tasks, with an increasing amount of powers, to accomplish all the things the state is supposed to do.
We must grasp these current and easily understandable situations which present us with the opportunity to make relevent arguments against the growing powers of the state. They are a gift.
Showing a modern, technophile youth that the state they want to do so many things for them can also do many undesireable things to them, esp. in terms of monitoring and invading their privacy, is a chance to cause some reconsideration of all the collectivist platitudes and assumptions that have bombarded them down through their developing years.
It may very well be that privacy can never be what it was in a simpler, non-connected era. We no longer live in isolated villages connected only by telegraph lines and an occasional train.
The world wide web is a pushme-pullyou, i.e., if you move out into the world electronically, the world also moves into your life, and knows things about you.
It is essential that the point be made clearly that the danger in all this is not just phishing or identity theft, but also encroachment, and abuse of power, by a coercive state unrestrained by strict constitutional limits on where it may snoop and what it may do with the information it uncovers.
When a little child begins to explore the world, a parent can tell it to be careful, that something is hot, or sharp, a hundred times. The danger doesn’t truly register until that first burned finger, that first bloody nick.
Multiply that hot stove a million times, to the inferno of the modern, overwheening nation state, and the legions of state cadres who want nothing more or less than to administer and control anything and everything they can get their claws into, and this is the danger facing our younger generations as they move into their adult lives.
Teach your children well…
Well, it’s good to see people taking an interest. But I don’t think either Vic’s paper or Christine’s video go far enough, and I think there are big problems with the solutions they both propose.
Vic’s paper I found a little disappointing. A lot of it seemed to be extolling the virtues of the coming revolution – with as much accuracy as predictions of the distant future usually have, I’m sure – with rather vaguely described risks, and the example scenarios seeming incredibly weak. He could have done far better buying a dozen cyberpunk books from his local bookstore, and cataloguing the far more detailed scenarios set out therein. I got the feeling that he was very much an enthusiast who doesn’t really see the danger himself, but has heard that it is respectable to be worried about it and wants to demonstrate that he’s worried too.
That his reflex solution to this problem is to get the UN to regulate it speaks volumes. But of course, this may just be due to the modifications required to get it published he mentioned.
Christine seemed to have a clearer idea of the technology’s potential, and tracking drug residues in the sewers and the air was a good example. But in calling for open source, and no secrets, she misses the bigger danger that some of these privacy-invading measures might actually be popular, or at least considered acceptable by a majority. This is the constant problem in this subject area of thinking that the government and law enforcement are the only threat. But you also have dangers from criminals, companies, and private individuals both individually and in groups. And most of these surveillance systems will be operated by private companies at first, who are both more efficient and less closely scrutinised than government.
And quite frankly, most people don’t care – so long as they don’t personally get any hassle over it. The banks know what we earn and spend and often where we spend it. The phone company knows who we talk to, and can listen to what we say if they choose. Nearly every shop has CCTV, and many have ‘loyalty’ cards, and customer databases. Nobody cares. I don’t expect most people to care about nanotech either, when it arrives.
The other problem they both miss is the inevitability of illegal, unauthorised use of this technology. It’s no use regulating it, and it’s no use the ‘geeks’ restraining what they invent, because the people you really want to be scared of don’t follow rules, and don’t feel your restraints.
What it will really lead to is what these things always lead to – an arms race of measure and countermeasure. People will manufacture nanofilters that scrub drug residue from air and urine, or manufacture fake signals so that the real ones get lost in the noise. They’ll build RFID tag jammers, or spoofers that let you switch ‘identity’. They’ll build GPS jammers, and bug finders, and fibre taps, and smart dust hunters, that will scan their environment for undesired nanotech or datatech and kill it – quite possibly using nanotech themselves. Surveillance technology will be invented; and as soon as it is, other people will set to work figuring out how to disable it.
(Think about copy-protection technology, and how that’s worked out.)
Because you can’t stop the world; let alone make it go backwards. That’s what the regulators seeking to ‘ban’ things never understand. You have to let it happen, and then run faster to stay ahead of it. You have to take part in the race.
Whilst it may not be true that all politicians and administrators are anti freedom types (although “I would say that”), the people who tend to hang around the UN certainly are.
The best thing a person can do for both freedom in his country and freedom in the world is – to help pull his country out of the UN (not give talks to folks there) and to help pull the whole organization down.
“But Paul the international declartion on human rights”.
Which is very carefully written (as are the other texts, such as the European, that come down from it).
The British representatives on the drafting of that document were E.H. Carr and Harold Laski.
E.H. Carr a man who never came upon a dictator he did not have time for (Hitler, Stalin – Carr presented their declarations and their stats as real, he was a scumbag to the core).
And Harold Laski – the fanatical socialist who Atlee (the British Labour Party Prime Minister after WWII) thought was insane.
Nothing good for liberty is going to come from the work of these people.
Interesting video and some interesting points but
a little to left leaning for my taste.
Had to bring up the pharmaceutical bombing without bringing up the point that it was as a distraction for Clinton.
Further, ANYONE who believes that our central gov’t is trying their best to protect us and only has our safety at heart needs ‘an adjustment’. Some individuals, maybe, the ‘whole hive’, no way, their primary interests are power, control, getting more power, getting re-elected and staying office.