The coming privacy crisis on the Internet of Things | Alasdair Allan | TEDxExeterSalon

what is the word privacy mean to you it turns out the concept of privacy is actually only a hundred and fifty years old while the foundations were laid as early as 1200 AD what you and I think of as privacy is actually a child of the Industrial Revolution we don't think about our privacy every day nor do we think about how our own actions affect our privacy we might shred our bank statements before we throw them out or cover the key powders before we type in our PIN despite that most of us would acknowledge that privacy is a fundamental human right while we might have privacy in our own home the right to be alone in many countries privacy is not explicitly protected by law especially when it comes to the Internet and there we've seen an aggressive erosion of our privacy because privacy is not actually about keeping things private it's not about secrets it's about choice the choice about what we tell other people about ourselves and there is only one business model on the Internet and that's advertising consumers have persistently refused to pay for software services and content on the web and that means behind everything we do on the Internet online is advertising and behind that is the data that makes it possible think for a moment how your life might be different if google charged a monthly subscription fee or worse yet perhaps took a micro payment based approach and charged you on a search by search basis our series almost accidental decisions and circumstances have led us to a place where the content on the Internet appears to be free it's not we pay for it in different ways our data and our attain you know what we used to pay Google for our searches and Facebook for keeping in touch with our friends more than a few years ago now Mark Zuckerberg famously stated that he no longer considered privacy to be a social norm I think Zuckerberg was right at least at the time but I also think there's a serious privacy backlash coming the era where privacy can no longer be assumed where is not a social norm will not long survive the coming of the Internet of Things because our devices are already becoming smarter they're becoming Network connected our computing is diffusing out into our environment whether we know it or not we leave a trail of data behind us as we move through the world data exhaust shreds of our digital identity if you will and in 10 years time our world will be full of sensors and they'll be embedded in everyday objects things that today might surprise us but for now for today those sensors are embedded in our cell phones in our smartwatches in our fitness trackers and they don't just talk to us they talk to the internet and the data from these objects almost invariably ends up in the cloud where it's aggregated packaged and then almost certainly sold that model is forced on manufacturers because we trained by the other internet refused to pay for the services that make these devices smart we might be willing to pay for an object a physical thing that we can hold in our hands but the services that lay behind them well not so much and that's unfortunate because that makes us the product rather than the customer because there's no such thing as the cloud all there is is other people's computers there are a long way away and if we won't pay for them then someone else has to which is a problem because it's not just our email or photographs of our care it's our heart rate our respiration rate our location not just how we slept last night but with whom suddenly the data were trading for our free services has become a lot more personal a few years ago now I robots the manufacturer of the adorable robotic vacuum cleaner the Roomba gave it's the ability to make a map of your home and figure out where it was within it a couple of months ago they turned around and said that they're now going to share those maps with their commercial partners and yes you did give them permission to do that you read the Terms of Service before you collect I agree right no nor did I it turns out this sort of data is a bit more sensitive people aren't quite as happy to trade this for free services especially when those free services come wrapped up inside Smart Objects that we paid for with actual money and it's not just the data from these objects there's a problem metadata the web traffic between the objects in your home and the cloud services that are behind them both can say a lot about your lifestyle and habits looking at the traffic flow patterns emerge whether you're at home whether you're asleep the footprints your objects leave behind them on the internet tell a story it really comes down to a matter of ownership we might have purchased a thing but the software and services that make that thing smart remain with the manufacturer the end of last year John Deere for instance turned around and told farmers that they didn't actually own their own tractors all the done was purchase a license to the software that made them go which is a bit of a problem if you're trying to fix a tractor in the middle of a muddy field or if you want to take it to a third-party repair shop you have to use the dealer network which really changes the concept of ownership in the run-up to hurricane Irma as it bore down in Florida recently Tesla the electric car company rolled out an over-the-air software update for its cheaper models in Florida giving drivers 30 to 40 miles extra range helping them to escape the hurricane normally that extra range range is locked down in software if you want to make use of it you have to pay extra which sort of makes me wonder when is the first death buy smart thing going to happen because there are a lot much smaller emergencies much less publicized much less notified where an extra 30 miles of range can be the difference between life and death I think the first death by smart thing whether it's corporate manslaughter or perhaps personal malice will be prosaic it'll be an electrical socket a smart thermostat a water heater it may well have already happens because in the rush to put our things online we've been left with purse security and privacy models and a business model that almost forces the manufacturers to abandon the things before we as customers are done with them the business model before behind most smart things in your home is pretty much the same you've made a one-time purchase of a thing but no actual commitment to pay a subscription to support the services that make it smart unfortunately the fabric of our homes is far more static than most manufacturers used to operating on internet time have come to assume we might be willing to replace our smart phones every year or two but not our thermostats or our light switches which sort of makes this business model a bit unsustainable which makes me think that perhaps both us and the manufacturers will eventually have to take subscriptions as the way to pay for smart devices this might be fine for those devices that require consumables the razorblade business model where by subsidized razors and then we pay through the nose for the razor blades forever more is well-established but for those objects where there are no ongoing costs traditionally except eventual replacements this is a bit more sticky both the manufacturers and ourselves might have to accept smart devices that degrade in functionality a smart light switch for instance that slowly becomes dumber as we stop paying for it and eventually becomes just a switch in the wall where you can turn the light on or off rather than a smart Internet connected device after all it's taken us 30 years to have a constructive debate around privacy on the internet and it's won quite frankly I think we've pretty much lost the Internet of Things however is still in its infancy and here I still have some hope because the debate around privacy there is already well underway and the problems I've talked about have become public relations nightmares for the companies involved which is not something you see with the other internet very often uber for instance recently rolled back changes to its app where it continued to track its riders even after they'd finished their trip it's reversed these changes stating that the hand properly communicated the added value of letting them trackers all the time even when we weren't using their app and legislators both here and in the United States are looking at what are called so-called right to repair bills this returns some measure of ownership to us the consumers the European Parliament for instance recently called and manufacturers to try and reduce the amount of built-in obsolescence in their products and to make spare parts more available and more affordable the thing that makes me give the most hope however is something called the GDP are the general data protection regulations this comes into effect in May next year throughout the European Union and despite brexit here in the United Kingdom it will fundamentally affect the way we build smart objects and the business models behind it it introduces new rights for our consent we must consent for our personal information to be used and our consent cannot just be assumed also we're not allowed to consent if we have no choice or if we can't withdraw our consent later objects also have to be designed for privacy by default and manufacturers have to look at the implications of the data that they do want to collect so no more shrink-wrap licensees around our data at least in theory there are also rights around their ability to be forgotten the right to be forgotten and our ability to move our data and services between devices which is something that's been almost impossible on the other internet those of us involved in building the Internet of Things are also staking a trusting to take notice of the sort of privacy concerns that all of us including those of us building it really have personally I'm involved in a community led effort to build a consumer facing trust mark for smart devices so like the wall mark or the fair trade symbol it's there to provide reassurance about the things you're buying it's an effort to go to Europe beyond the gdpr and look at the whole lifecycle of a smart device from design to manufacture to eventual disposal it's an effort to make more ethical design choices because now and certainly in the future our privacy will rely on the design choices that people building these smart devices will make however community-led efforts like that and to certain lesser extents the legislation like the gdpr rely on public pressure that relies on privacy scandals becoming public relations nightmares for those companies and very much we we have to look at these devices we have to look at how they're built the way we approach them we'll determine whether it's us or the manufacturers that own them whether it's us or the manufacturers that get to use the data they generate whether we have any choices about what we tell other people about ourselves whether there's any privacy at all thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 69,583

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Technology, Advertising, Apps, Choice, Data, Digital, Internet, Privacy, Smartphone, Social Media

Id: yG4JL0ZRmi4

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 28 2017