the smart power grid: US Department of Energy (2008), “The smart grid: An introduction,” http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/DOE_SG_Book_Single_Pages(1).pdf. US Department of Energy (2014), “What is the smart grid?” https://www.smartgrid.gov/the_smart_grid.
when you’re having sex: Gregory Ferenstein, “How health trackers could reduce sexual infidelity,” Tech Crunch, http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/05/how-health-trackers-could-reduce-sexual-infidelity.
Give the device more information: Fitabase (3 Dec 2013), “Privacy policy,” http://www.fitabase.com/Privacy.
Many medical devices: Sarah E. Needleman (14 Aug 2012), “New medical devices get smart,” Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390444318104577587141033340190.
It’s not just specialized devices: Sara M. Watson (10 Oct 2013), “The latest smartphones could turn us all into activity trackers,” Wired, http://www.wired.com/2013/10/the-trojan-horse-of-the-latest-iphone-with-the-m7-coprocessor-we-all-become-qs-activity-trackers.
Companies like 23andMe: Thomas Goetz (17 Nov 2007), “23AndMe will decode your DNA for $1,000. Welcome to the age of genomics,” Wired, http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/15-12/ff_genomics. Elizabeth Murphy (14 Oct 2013), “Inside 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki’s $99 DNA revolution,” Fast Company, http://www.fastcompany.com/3018598/for-99-this-ceo-can-tell-you-what-might-kill-you-inside-23andme-founder-anne-wojcickis-dna-r.
personalized marketing: Charles Seife (27 Nov 2013), “23andMe is terrifying, but not for the reasons the FDA thinks,” Scientific American, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/23andme-is-terrifying-but-not-for-reasons-fda.
insurance companies may someday buy: Rebecca Greenfield (25 Nov 2013), “Why 23andMe terrifies health insurance companies,” Fast Company, http://www.fastcompany.com/3022224/innovation-agents/why-23andme-terrifies-health-insurance-companies.
lifelogging apps: Leo Kelion (6 Jan 2014), “CES 2014: Sony shows off life logging app and kit,” BBC News, http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-25633647.
it will include a video record: Alec Wilkinson (28 May 2007), “Remember this? A project to record everything we do in life,” New Yorker, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/05/28/070528fa_fact_wilkinson.
Google Glass is the first wearable device: Jenna Wortham (8 Mar 2013), “Meet Memoto, the lifelogging camera,” New York Times Blogs, http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/meet-memoto-the-lifelogging-camera.
Internet of Things: Ken Hess (10 Jan 2014), “The Internet of Things outlook for 2014: Everything connected and communicating,” ZDNet, http://www.zdnet.com/the-internet-of-things-outlook-for-2014-everything-connected-and-communicating-7000024930.
smart cities: Georgina Stylianou (29 Apr 2013), “Idea to have sensors track everything in city,” Press (Christchurch), http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/business/the-rebuild/8606956/Idea-to-have-sensors-track-everything-in-city. Victoria Turk (Jul 2013), “City sensors: the Internet of Things is taking over our cities,” Wired, http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/07/everything-is-connected/city-sensors.
smart toothbrushes: Sam Byford (5 Jan 2014), “Kolibree’s smart toothbrush claims to track and improve your dental hygiene,” Verge, http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/5/5277426/kolibree-smart-toothbrush.
smart light bulbs: Margaret Rhodes (23 Sep 2014), “Ex-Tesla and NASA engineers make a light bulb that’s smarter than you,” Wired, http://www.wired.com/2014/09/ex-tesla-nasa-engineers-make-light-bulb-thats-smarter.
smart sidewalk squares: Charles Stross has discussed the implications of these. Charles Stross (25 Jun 2014), “YAPC::NA 2014 keynote: Programming Perl in 2034,” Charlie’s Diary, http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/06/yapcna-2014-keynote-programmin.html.
smart pill bottles: Valentina Palladino (8 Jan 2014), “AdhereTech’s smart pill bottle knows when you take, and miss, your medication,” Verge, http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/8/5289022/adheretech-smart-pill-bottle.
smart clothing: Econocom (19 Sep 2013), “When fashion meets the Internet of Things,” emedia, http://blog.econocom.com/en/blog/when-fashion-meets-the-internet-of-things. Michael Knigge (28 Aug 2014), “Tagging along: Is Adidas tracking soccer fans?” Deutsche Welle, http://www.dw.de/tagging-along-is-adidas-tracking-soccer-fans/a-1788463.
because why not?: We’ve seen this trend before. Digital clocks first became popular in the 1970s. Initially they were largely stand-alone devices—alarm clocks and watches—but as their price declined, they became embedded into other things: first your microwave, then your coffeepot, oven, thermostat, VCR, and television. Internet-enabled sensors are heading in that direction.
Estimates put the current number: Natasha Lomas (9 May 2013), “10BN+ wirelessly connected devices today, 30BN+ in 2020’s ‘Internet Of Everything,’ says ABI Research,” Tech Crunch, http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/09/internet-of-everything.
The hype level is pretty high: Valentina Palladino (10 Jan 2014), “Invisible intelligence: How tiny sensors could connect everything we own,” Verge, http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/10/5293778/invisible-intelligence-tiny-sensors-that-connect-everything.
eyes and ears of the Internet: Ben Hammersley (Jul 2013), “When the world becomes the Web,” Wired, http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/07/everything-is-connected/when-the-world-becomes-the-web.
Smart streetlights will gather data: Newark Airport has installed these. Diane Cardwell (17 Feb 2014), “At Newark Airport, the lights are on, and they’re watching you,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/business/at-newark-airport-the-lights-are-on-and-theyre-watching-you.html.
Cameras will only get better: Olga Kharif (31 Oct 2013), “As drones evolve from military to civilian uses, venture capitalists move in,” Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/as-drones-evolve-from-military-to-civilian-uses-venture-capitalists-move-in/2013/10/31/592ca862-419e-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html.
Raytheon is planning to fly a blimp: Paul McLeary (29 Jun 2014), “Powerful radar blimp to surveil Washington, Baltimore, out to sea,” Defense News, http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140629/DEFREG02/306290012/Powerful-Radar-Blimp-Surveil-Washington-Baltimore-Out-Sea.
An e-mail system is similar: Some of that argument is here. Electronic Frontier Foundation (2014), “The government’s word games when talking about NSA domestic spying,” https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/wordgames.
an exabyte of data: This is based on the reasonable assumption that a page is 2 kilobytes. It’s not really fair, though, because so much of this data is voice, images, and video.
creating more data per day: M. G. Siegler (4 Aug 2010), “Eric Schmidt: Every 2 days we create as much information as we did up to 2003,” Tech Crunch, http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/04/schmidt-data.
76 exabytes of data will travel: Cisco (10 Jun 2014), “Cisco visual networking index: Forecast and methodology, 2013–2018,” http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/ip-ngn-ip-next-generation-network/white_paper_c11-481360.html.
a petabyte of cloud storage will cost: Chris M. Evans (18 Apr 2014), “IAAS Series: Cloud storage pricing: How low can they go?” Architecting IT, http://blog.architecting.it/2014/04/18/iaas-series-cloud-storage-pricing-how-low-can-they-go.
store every tweet ever sent: K. Young (6 Sep 2012), “How much would it cost to store the entire Twitter Firehose?” Mortar: Data Science at Scale, http://blog.mortardata.com/post/31027073689/how-much-would-it-cost-to-store-the-entire-twitter.
every phone call ever made: Brewster Kahle (2013), “Cost to store all US phonecalls made in a year so it could be datamined,” https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuqlWHQKlooOdGJrSzhBVnh0WGlzWHpCZFNVcURkX0E#gid=0.
In 2013, the NSA completed: James Bamford (15 Mar 2012), “The NSA is building the country’s biggest spy center (watch what you say),” Wired, http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all.
third largest in the world: Forbes (19 Oct 2012), “The 5 lar
gest data centers in the world,” Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/pictures/fhgl45ijg/range-international-information-hub.
The details are classified: Kashmir Hill (24 Jul 2013), “Blueprints of NSA’s ridiculously expensive data center in Utah suggest it holds less info than thought,” Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/07/24/blueprints-of-nsa-data-center-in-utah-suggest-its-storage-capacity-is-less-impressive-than-thought.
cost $1.4 billion so far: Siobhan Gorman (21 Oct 2013), “Contractors fight over delays to NSA data center,” Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303672404579149902978119902.
Google has the capacity: Randall Munro (2013), “Google’s datacenters on punch cards,” What If? XKCD, https://what-if.xkcd.com/63.
In 2011, Schrems demanded: Cyrus Farivar (15 Nov 2012), “How one law student is making Facebook get serious about privacy,” Ars Technica, http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/how-one-law-student-is-making-facebook-get-serious-about-privacy. Olivia Solon (28 Dec 2012), “How much data did Facebook have on one man? 1,200 pages of data in 57 categories,” BBC News, http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/12/start/privacy-versus-facebook.
Facebook sent him a CD: Schrems’s discovery led him to file a class action lawsuit against Facebook. Liat Clark (1 Aug 2014), “Facebook hit with international class action lawsuit,” Wired UK, http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-08/01/facebook-class-action-lawsuit.
2: DATA AS SURVEILLANCE
what we know about the NSA’s surveillance: Previous leakers include Thomas Drake, Mark Klein, and Bill Binney. Subsequent leakers have not been identified yet. Bruce Schneier (7 Aug 2014), “The US intelligence community has a third leaker,” Schneier on Security, https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/08/the_us_intellig.html.
NSA collects the cell phone call records: Glenn Greenwald (5 Jun 2013), “NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily,” Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order.
One government defense: Barack Obama (7 Jun 2013), “Statement by the President,” US Executive Office of the President, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/07/statement-president. James R. Clapper (7 Jun 2013), “DNI statement on recent unauthorized disclosures of classified information,” Office of the Director of National Intelligence, http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-press-releases-2013/868-dni-statement-on-recent-unauthorized-disclosures-of-classified-information. Ed O’Keefe (6 Jun 2013), “Transcript: Dianne Feinstein, Saxby Chambliss explain, defend NSA phone records program,” Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/06/06/transcript-dianne-feinstein-saxby-chambliss-explain-defend-nsa-phone-records-program.
The intended point: Am I the only one who finds it suspicious that President Obama always uses very specific words? He says things like, “Nobody is listening to your telephone calls.” This leaves open the possibility that the NSA is recording, transcribing, and analyzing your phone calls—and, very occasionally, reading them. This is more likely to be true, and something a pedantically minded president could claim he wasn’t lying about.
Collecting metadata on people: This is a good general article on the intimacy of metadata. Dahlia Lithwick and Steve Vladeck (22 Nov 2013), “Taking the ‘meh’ out of metadata,” Slate, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/11/nsa_and_metadata_how_the_government_can_spy_on_your_health_political_beliefs.html.
Phone metadata reveals: Edward W. Felten (23 Aug 2013), “Declaration of Professor Edward W. Felten,” American Civil Liberties Union et al. v. James R. Clapper et al., United States District Court, Southern District of New York (Case 1:13-cv-03994-WHP), https://www.aclu.org/files/pdfs/natsec/clapper/2013.08.26%20ACLU%20PI%20Brief%20-%20Declaration%20-%20Felten.pdf.
It provides a window: Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye et al. (2–5 Apr 2013), “Predicting people personality using novel mobile phone-based metrics,” 6th International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling and Prediction, Washington, D.C., http://realitycommons.media.mit.edu/download.php?file=deMontjoye2013predicting-citation.pdf.
It yields a detailed summary: IBM offers a class in analyzing phone call metadata. IBM Corporation (2014), “9T225G: Telephone analysis using i2 Analyst’s Notebook,” http://www-03.ibm.com/services/learning/content/ites.wss/zz/en?pageType=course_description&courseCode=9T225G&cc=.
personal nature of what the researchers: Jonathan Mayer and Patrick Mutchler (12 Mar 2014), “MetaPhone: The sensitivity of telephone metadata,” Web Policy, http://webpolicy.org/2014/03/12/metaphone-the-sensitivity-of-telephone-metadata.
Web search data is another source: While it seems obvious that this is data and not metadata, it seems to be treated as metadata by the NSA. I believe its justification is that the search terms are encoded in the URLs. The NSA’s XKEYSCORE slides talked about collecting “web-based searches,” which further indicates that the NSA considers this metadata. Glenn Greenwald (31 Jul 2013), “XKeyscore: NSA tool collects ‘nearly everything a user does on the internet,’” Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data.
The NSA claims it’s metadata: This demonstrates that the difference is more legal hairsplitting than anything else.
When I typed “should I tell my w”: It’s the same with “should I tell my girlfriend.”
Google knows who clicked: Arwa Mahdawi (22 Oct 2013), “Google’s autocomplete spells out our darkest thoughts,” Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/22/google-autocomplete-un-women-ad-discrimination-algorithms.
Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt admitted: Derek Thompson (1 Oct 2010), “Google’s CEO: ‘The laws are written by lobbyists,’” Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/googles-ceo-the-laws-are-written-by-lobbyists/63908.
Your tweets tell the world: You can search for the sleep patterns of any Twitter user. Amit Agarwal (2013), “Sleeping Time,” Digital Inspiration, http://sleepingtime.org.
Your buddy lists and address books: Two studies of Facebook social graphs show how easy it is to predict these and other personal traits. Carter Jernigan and Behram R. T. Mistree (5 Oct 2009), “Gaydar: Facebook friendships expose sexual orientation,” First Monday 14, http://firstmonday.org/article/view/2611/2302. Michal Kosinski, David Stillwell, and Thore Graepel (11 Mar 2013), “Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (Early Edition), http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/03/06/1218772110.abstract.
Your e-mail headers reveal: The MIT Media Lab tool Immersion builds a social graph from your e-mail metadata. MIT Media Lab (2013), “Immersion: A people-centric view of your email life,” https://immersion.media.mit.edu.
Metadata can be much more revealing: Brian Lam (19 Jun 2013), “Phew, NSA is just collecting metadata. (You should still worry),” Wired, http://www.wired.com/2013/06/phew-it-was-just-metadata-not-think-again.
metadata is far more meaningful: Edward W. Felten (23 Aug 2013), “Declaration of Professor Edward W. Felten,” American Civil Liberties Union et al. v. James R. Clapper et al., United States District Court, Southern District of New York (Case 1:13-cv-03994-WHP), https://www.aclu.org/files/pdfs/natsec/clapper/2013.08.26%20ACLU%20PI%20Brief%20-%20Declaration%20-%20Felten.pdf.
“If you have enough metadata”: Alan Rusbridger (21 Nov 2013), “The Snowden leaks and the public,” New York Review of Books, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/nov/21/snowden-leaks-and-public.
“We kill people based on metadata”: David Cole (10 May 2014), “‘We kill people based on metadata,’” New York Review of Books, http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/may/10/we-kill-people-based-metadata.
one spy for every 166 citizens: John O. Koehler (1999), Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police, Westview Press, http://books.google.com/
books?id=waxWwxY1tt8C.
Roving wiretaps meant: Mary DeRosa (2005), “Section 206: Roving surveillance authority under FISA: A summary,” Patriot Debates, http://apps.americanbar.org/natsecurity/patriotdebates/section-206.
The motivations are different: David Lyon makes this point. David Lyon (2003), Surveillance after September 11, Polity, http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=0745631819.
Another device allows me to see all the data: BrickHouse Security (2014), “iPhone / Android Spy Stick,” Skymall, https://www.skymall.com/iphone-%2F-android-spy-stick/28033GRP.html.
I can buy a keyboard logger: Keyloggers.com (2014), “Top keyloggers of 2014 comparison and reviews,” http://www.keyloggers.com.
I can buy call intercept software: Stealth Genie (2014), “Live call intercept,” http://www.stealthgenie.com/features/live-call-intercept.html.
I can buy a remote-controlled drone helicopter: Amazon.com (2014), “DJI Phantom 2 Ready to Fly Quadcopter - With Zenmuse H3-2D Camera Gimbal: $959.00 (list $999),” Amazon.com, http://www.amazon.com/Dji-Phantom-Ready-Fly-Quadcopter/dp/B00H7HPU54.
Professional surveillance devices: There are prototypes for flying sensors that resemble birds and insects, and even smaller sensors—no larger than dust particles—that will float around in the wind. Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker (19 Jun 2011), “War evolves with drones, some tiny as bugs,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/world/20drones.html. John W. Whitehead (15 Apr 2013), “Roaches, mosquitoes, and birds: The coming micro-drone revolution,” Rutherford Institute, https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/roaches_mosquitoes_and_birds_the_coming_micro_drone_revolution.
Sprint charges law enforcement: Ashkan Soltani (9 Jan 2014), “The cost of surveillance,” http://ashkansoltani.org/2014/01/09/the-cost-of-surveillance. Kevin S. Bankston and Ashkan Soltani (9 Jan 2014), “Tiny constables and the cost of surveillance: Making cents out of United States v. Jones,” Yale Law Journal 123, http://yalelawjournal.org/forum/tiny-constables-and-the-cost-of-surveillance-making-cents-out-of-united-states-v-jones.
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