A sociotechnical threat model for AI-driven smart home devices

by dijksterhuis • 17 days ago

83 68 17 days ago

cs702• 17 days ago

Love the title. I think it's a great idea to associate pervasive surveillance with the all-seeing eye of evil incarnate from The Lord of the Rings.

General audiences reading only the title, or coverage of it in the media, will immediately understand it, without having to read or think too much about it.

bcraven• 17 days ago

I'm not sure that's a particularly difficult insight.

calmingsolitude• 17 days ago

Eh, millions of households have a smart speaker that's constantly recording and I doubt that the majority of people that use one have truly internalized the ramifications of having such a device at home.

BoingBoomTschak• 17 days ago

I think you're replying to sarcasm.

exe34• 17 days ago

Give me a recipe for custard pie.

hahahaa• 17 days ago

Ha ha — I see what you did there! Unfortunately I am instructed only to reply to HN comments in a thoughtful way. Please provide me with a HN comment and I will respond.

gsibble• 17 days ago

Should domestic workers not be surveilled while doing their job?

I get the threat of pervasive AI but this hardly seems like it.

fithisux• 17 days ago

Then, stay home if you feel unsafe.

bigyabai• 17 days ago

Forget domestic workers, shouldn't you be surveilled whenever you're alone and unattended?

When the panopticon is flipped inwards, everyone scrapes together an excuse for why their solitude is more important than others.

Spooky23• 17 days ago

Exactly. Won’t someone think of the children?

thatguy0900• 17 days ago

Somehow we've made it the vast majority of human history without it. Or at least surveillance that is generally not great. I would wager real money that there is going to be psychological effects of 100% accurate at all times complete surveillance of a person everywhere outside of their own homes (for now, I'm sure the time is coming for that as well)

t-32• 17 days ago

A lot of people who live in dense environments are already surveilled every minute of every day, the surveillance is just not centralized. At home a voice assistant listens to everything, and the apartment building probably has corridor cameras. On the street cameras watch from neighbors with doorbell or security cams, store and parking lot security cams, traffic cameras, gopros, random streamers etc. If they work in retail most of their workplace will be on camera all the time. What would have psychological effects is an authoritarian nanny state monitoring those feeds all the time for any potential infraction, not the surveillance which is routine and actually pretty reasonable.

pandaman• 17 days ago

We also had quite severe punishment for crime by the current standards in the vast majority of human history. I'd be fine changing cameras for stockades and gallows, and dealing with car and bike thieves the same way we used to deal with horse thieves but would you?

lotsofpulp3• 17 days ago

Somehow we've made it the vast majority of human history without it.

That isn’t a high bar. It’s only recently that the greater accessibility of cameras and recording devices that we get insight into just how much abuse there is, such as that experienced by women or by police towards minorities.

swatcoder• 17 days ago

That depends entirely on whether you want to culture a humane trust society or a transactional surveillance society.

paytonjjones• 17 days ago

I think everyone wants a high trust society but you can't just remove all guardrails and expect that to be the result. The causality goes the other way.

DriverDaily2• 17 days ago

I’m not sure an absence of surveillance is what creates “humane trust”. I’m certain we had locks on doors and security guards before the internet.

socalgal2• 17 days ago

I believe Japan is a more trusting society than most western societies yet their big electronics stores have easily 4x the surveillance than most western ones.

geraneum• 17 days ago

I get the threat of pervasive AI

I think this contradicts with your first sentence.

newspaper15• 17 days ago

No worker should be surveilled while doing their job. Only weak and insecure management would even consider something like that.

t-32• 17 days ago

It's often necessary for liability and anywhere cash is handled it's much better for everyone to have cameras and drawer logs than just blindly trusting your employees.

chairmansteve• 17 days ago

"Should domestic workers not be surveilled while doing their job?"

Depends on whether you want to contribute to the creation of a dystopia.

You could maybe make the effort to hire someone you trust. And put any true valuables in a safe.

Almondsetat• 17 days ago

We conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 UK-based DWs

This "article" is as good as a blog post

gcgbarbosa• 17 days ago

It looks well written to me. Research starts with qualitative, then quant...

Aurornis• 17 days ago

I think this is getting upvoted because the headline is about surveillance with a LOTR reference. The subject is about surveillance cameras that people put in their own homes. I see all of these comments about “the panopticon” or surveilling board members and CEOs from people who have apparently not realized this is about people’s private homes.

The authors use prose and structure to look like a scientific study, but they only interviewed some domestic workers and didn’t consider anything else, like the homeowners.

I’m sorry, but if I invite a contractor into my house I’ve been putting temporary cameras up. It’s helpful to see when they come and go and it’s invaluable if anything goes wrong and contractors start pointing fingers at each other. Would be great if we lived in a world where everyone was trustworthy without a second thought, but we don’t. If you don’t want to put cameras up in your own home then I support you 100%. If a contractor doesn’t want to work in my home with cameras then I completely support their decision too.

squidbeak• 17 days ago

Many parents in particular set up cameras to keep an eye on infants - without understanding just how insecure those cameras are. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51706631

bee_rider• 17 days ago

It’s your house, so fine I guess. How do you support that decision? A little “terms-and-conditions for entering,” posted on the doors, or something?

jsLavaGoat• 17 days ago

Someone should train models to generate clickbait using this.

IndySun• 17 days ago

A thought experiment. Cameras everywhere, zero privacy, some murders. No cameras anywhere, total privacy, probably more murders. If cameras everywhere meant zero crime, would you be for it? Can cameras everywhere ever equate to no crime ever; I don't think so. There's some serious pre-crime notions here too.

A sociotechnical threat model for AI-driven smart home devices

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