Tag: internet of things

Apple v FBI Doesn’t Address the Real Challenge

In a story that appeared Monday in The Guardian, writer Danny Yadron projects a hypothetical, but not technically unrealistic, future scenario in which we imagine our driverless car hijacks a run to the grocery store, transporting us instead to a police station because face-recognition software resulted in our being wanted for questioning in an investigation.  The eerie itself, Yadron reports, comes from engineer and former US government privacy policy consultant  Ashkan Soltani, who warns that this kind of circumstance could become reality if Apple loses its fight with the FBI over whether or not it must write code to circumvent the security system of San Bernardino terrorist Sayed Farook’s iPhone.

Of course, it is not farfetched to anticipate new forms of abuse in our increasingly networked lives, and it is prudent to seek remedies in policy and caselaw precedent that may preempt such scenarios; but I’m not sure that a ruling one way or another in the Apple case would be quite so prophetic as some observers suggest.  In fact, assuming we do become increasingly networked and adapt to the holistic Internet of Things as effortlessly and rapidly as the technologists expect us to, the matter of protecting civil liberties in this future society seems increasingly paradoxical. After all, government agencies are supposed to be our hedge against the excesses of private enterprise that might invade our privacy or run afoul of anti-trust restrictions; or government agencies are meant to protect us from criminal abuse of the same systems. But do we simultaneously expect private enterprise or “white hat” hackers to protect us from the overreach of government?

Yadron’s article addresses several aspects of this challenge, citing competing points of view from the policy, law-enforcement, and technology sectors.  And there are no easy answers.  For one thing, the current Apple case involving the cell phone of a known terrorist and a warrant issued by court order may be too specific to beg the broader question as to who controls the code that runs our day-to-day lives.  As of yesterday morning, the FBI announced that they may be able to crack the iPhone without Apple’s help; but even if the presently-suspended legal case were to proceed, Yadron notes that the court could rule in the FBI’s favor in this one extraordinary instance while remaining silent on the much larger question.

My own assumption is that, with regard to cases involving law enforcement, the public is still served by the courts and due process and that new legislation may not be necessary to adapt to new technology. For instance, as dramatic as the futuristic arrest by driverless car scenario may sound, it would be an illegal detention according to existing statute, at least the way Soltani imagines it.  But if similar automation were one day used to capture a wanted criminal based on evidence and an arrest warrant, due process would not necessarily suffer just because the arrest would be partly effected via code. Particularly as we anticipate an inevitable increase in automated law enforcement practices, if we cannot continue to invest faith and power in judicial oversight, we’re basically hosed.

With regard to living day-to-day in a networked society, though, we probably have to imagine scenarios more subtle than the automated arrest by our own robot vehicles—like undetectable invasions that track habits and behaviors, all organized into data that could be used to manipulate or determine opportunities for jobs, education, healthcare, insurance, credit, and so on.  The opportunities these encroachments provide for mischief by corporate, criminal, or government entities are indeed new territory—much more so it seems than the Apple/FBI case—and could easily demand new legislation.

Yadron quotes science fiction writer Bruce Bethke, who gives examples like your cellphone notifying your health insurance provider when you enter a tobacco shop. Users of Google Now on their Android phones have opted into a “service” that cross-references search, GMail content, location, etc. to anticipate their wants and needs and then provides suggestions via  Cards.  Why anyone finds this more helpful than creepy is a mystery to me. All I imagine is Montag’s doe-eyed wife, subservient to the system in Fahrenheit 451, when I contemplate the capacity for this technology to push behaviors, including political or social beliefs. Even at its most benign, it just sounds annoying, like they should have called it Google Nag instead of Google Now.

Meanwhile, we should expect to see a growing market for anti-surveillance products and services for what can only become an increasingly paranoid world in which we are voluntarily spying on ourselves.  As AlterNet reports, English designer Adam Harvey is making wardrobe that will shield against thermal imaging, and he’s demonstrating makeup techniques that will confound face-recognition software. Such efforts are endorsed by organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Fight for the Future because the presumed abusers of surveillance technology will be government agencies, but what about the more subtle private-enterprise promises of the networked society?

Will we live in “smart” homes enjoying their many conveniences but always sure to wear our cloaking PJs?   Will we need to buy and vigilantly update an array of countermeasures to protect our privacy inside our own walls because now they really do have ears?  As we interact with our own homes and vehicles and with one another, we will constantly be sending data to somebody’s servers somewhere.  We are already doing this, though not as holistically as the Internet of Things implies.  How do we write legislation that protects against corporate, government, or criminal abuse of these data and systems?  Or more immediately, whom can we expect to represent civil liberties in this context?

Because I think organizations like EFF and Fight for the Future are often haggling over small potatoes while getting nowhere near the larger question.  These digital rights activists—who are dependent upon Silicon Valley support by the way—make a lot of noise about our “right” to jailbreak these disposable, hand-held devices—something very few of us will ever bother to do—without coming close to having the real discussion about whether or not public agency oversight will be able to protect consumers in a fully-networked future.  When too much of the emphasis on anti-surveillance assumes “government” will be the only abuser, we forget that there is a profit motive in all this monitoring by private enterprise.  Meanwhile, as Google’s presence in Washington increases considerably, are legislators and executive branch officials getting advice from Google on how to protect us from Google?  Because one way or another, we seem to be voluntarily becoming a surveillance society, and I wonder if there will ultimately be an opt out button.

Right to Jailbreak Auto Software May be a Moot Point

Last month, a good friend of mine — an attorney who works in intellectual property and believes in its value — shared a brief post from BoingBoing by Cory Doctorow criticizing efforts by the auto industry to enforce the copyrights on software, now intrinsic in any contemporary vehicle, in order to limit consumer choice in the marketplace. In this case, Doctorow calls out GM for its efforts to stop the Copyright Office from granting an exception to the DMCA that would allow owners of GM vehicles to jailbreak the software, thus enabling them to perform their own diagnostics and maintenance at home, or to use non-GM-authorized service providers and parts. Such restrictions, increasingly asserted by automakers, are seen as a prime example of industry abusing intellectual property rights as protectionist measures to restrict liberty and limit competition.

Certainly, my pro-IP attorney friend shared the story with the comment that she feels automakers are overreaching; and, in this regard, she is consistent with most copyright advocates as well as the courts, which have generally favored competition when other industries have tried to use DMCA anti-circumvention measures to control the market.  So, in this particular moment in history, the complaint is understandable; though the conversation itself, I believe, raises a much broader and more interesting subject beyond contemporary copyright, begging the question as to exactly what kind of future it is we think we’re building?

In fact, Cory Doctorow himself is one of the more prominent voices presently insisting that those of us who still place considerable value on copyright and IP in general are anachronisms. We are told that we are metaphorically “clinging to the buggy whip industry while automobiles pass us by.”  But in his criticism of restrictions on jailbreaking contemporary cars, I have to ask exactly who’s clinging to the past here? Because the more our automobiles become sophisticated computers on wheels, and most especially if we are serious about migrating toward a future of driverless (or diver-optional) cars, it seems to me these complaints about automakers’ application of copyrights in this case are clinging to rapidly fading concepts of ownership that will naturally continue to change if we are to take the futurists and tech-utopians seriously.

In a future system in which an automobile becomes just one dynamic node in a vast traffic grid that is holistically maintained by software — because that is the only way it could work — not only will individuals not be allowed to service their own cars, but the very idea that a car may be “owned,” as we presently define that term, could be scrapped along with the last internal combustion engine.  As Jaron Lanier suggests in Who Owns the Future, a driverless paradigm may be brought about by public mandate if it can be demonstrated that automobile fatalities and serious injuries can be reduced by a substantial margin. And more recently, articles have been appearing that predict we’ll at least see driverless taxis within a decade or so, while others have examined the environmental benefits of a driverless future.  Combine these factors with certain market realities — like the fact that American millennials will be the first generation to earn less than previous generations and that they concurrently reveal a general comfort with “sharing economy” concepts that erase traditional notions of ownership —  and our long-standing relationship with automobiles as symbols of personal freedom could give way to a driverless future that would necessitate something like a public/private model of personal transportation.

I know this projection is probably unappealing to many Americans today because we do have a unique relationship with our cars, our big open roads, our ability to be our own mechanics, and our sense of liberty.  But that’s exactly why I think the larger question as to what kind of technological future we’re building is far more intriguing than any momentary complaints about an automaker using copyrights to restrict traditional market freedoms in maintenance.  Sure, we can, and probably should, demand the right to jailbreak cars on principle right now, but that principle could become moot faster than we think.

It seems reasonable to assume that if we are to embrace The Internet of Things, that as ordinary functions of our lives are made easier, safer, cheaper, or faster by networked systems, the more the concept of “owning” many types of property is likely to change. In many cases, these predictions seem to imply a return to older models based on monopolistic, semi-regulated, industries.  When I was a kid, nobody owned a telephone. A household got an account with the one phone carrier that served the community, and then leased however many phones as needed from the same company, much as we still lease cable boxes to this day.  So, if we progress toward a future of smart, driverless cars and smart homes, at what point do regulations like building code, consumer and environmental protections, or safety regulations merge with intellectual property to become an intertwined body of law that inherently limits our present sense of personal liberty vis a vis those items we presently call “our stuff?”

Consider the flap from libertarians over the CF lightbulb years ago, or the overreach by Keurig in its attempt to use IP to thwart the sale of off-brand cups for its coffee makers; and then imagine how many components of your home might one day be part of a complex, data-driven network that only works properly if all the compatible units are precisely installed and maintained.  “Your” house  would become  just one little Christmas light on a vast strand of homes and businesses that society cannot afford to let go out. How could such a highly automated and integrated system function without limiting individual choice and potentially threatening competition in the market?  Of course, our adoption of holistic, networked integration of daily life is either unlikely, or it depends on such profound social changes that it is a bit hard to fathom.  But as long as we’re talking about broader principles, let’s talk about those with regard to the technologies and models we’re being told are the future rather than merely react to momentary misapplications in models we believe to be rapidly fading into the past.

By and large, I assume we enjoy the benefits of safety and convenience that come with computer-assisted cars, but now we’re on the leading edge of the question as to whether or not we ultimately want computer-centric cars.  If so, it is probably unavoidable that we must  recalibrate our definitions of ownership if we are going to allow the machines to drive us rather than the other way around.  Thus, I find it a strange contradiction to highlight every example, at this moment in history, that reveals copyright to be a restraint on personal liberty when it is simultaneously claimed to be a restraint on innovation itself.  Because many a predicted innovation may ultimately limit traditional liberties by virtue of paradigmatic change, resulting in fewer consumer choices in various sectors.  A driverless-vehicle paradigm implies a model that is fundamentally communal, which doesn’t have to be a bad thing for society per se, but it is certainly anathema to the American sense of personal liberty with regard to “our” cars.   As such Doctorow’s complaint, while perhaps valid in this moment, appears to rust a little on the page almost as quickly as it can be read.