Big Brother is coming: Google, mass surveillance, and the rise of the “Internet of Things” - Salon.com

Big Brother is coming: Google, mass surveillance, and the rise of the “Internet of Things” - Salon.com



http://www.salon.com/2014/03/26/big_brother_is_here_google_mass_surveillance_and_the_rise_of_the_internet_of_things_partner/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Estimates vary, but by 2020 there could be over 30 billion
devices connected to the Internet. Once dumb, they will have smartened
up thanks to sensors and other technologies embedded in them and, thanks
to your machines, your life will quite literally have gone online.

The
implications are revolutionary. Your smart refrigerator will keep an
inventory of food items, noting when they go bad. Your smart thermostat
will learn your habits and adjust the temperature to your liking. Smart
lights will illuminate dangerous parking garages, even as they keep an
“eye” out for suspicious activity.

Techno-evangelists have a nice
catchphrase for this future utopia of machines and the never-ending
stream of information, known as Big Data, it produces: the Internet of
Things.  So abstract. So inoffensive. Ultimately, so meaningless.

A
future Internet of Things does have the potential to offer real
benefits, but the dark side of that seemingly shiny coin is this:
companies will increasingly know all there is to know about you.  Most
people are already aware that virtually everything a typical person does
on the Internet is tracked. In the not-too-distant future, however,
real space will be increasingly like cyberspace, thanks to our headlong
rush toward that Internet of Things. With the rise of the networked
device, what people do in their homes, in their cars, in stores, and
within their communities will be monitored and analyzed in ever more
intrusive ways by corporations and, by extension, the government.

And
one more thing: in cyberspace it is at least theoretically possible to
log off.  In your own well-wired home, there will be no “opt out.”

You
can almost hear the ominous narrator’s voice from an old “Twilight
Zone” episode saying, “Soon the net will close around all of us. There
will be no escape.”

Except it’s no longer science fiction. It’s our barely distant present.

Home Invasion 

“[W]e
estimate that only one percent of things that could have an IP address
do have an IP address today, so we like to say that ninety-nine percent
of the world is still asleep,” Padmasree Warrior, Cisco’s Chief
Technology and Strategy Officer, told the
Silicon Valley Summit in December. “It’s up to our imaginations to
figure out what will happen when the ninety-nine percent wakes up.”