Trading security and privacy for convenience

Society is coming closer and closer to being Orwell's worst nightmare, complete with screens in the corner always watching, listening...

         Ladies and gentlemen, get your aluminum-foil hats on, 'cause we're getting into some conspiracy theories! The only difference is that unlike a single grainy photo of a guy in a lake with a wooden carving of a cryptid on his back, we have some quantifiable evidence that your device is, in fact, listening to everything around it 24 hours a day.

          Because smart speakers lack the necessary hardware for voice recognition, every single word said around it after (wake word) is streamed to (Overgrown corporation), where the command can be recognized. Unfortunately, smart speakers are notorious for their false positives, where the user says something close to the wake word, accidentally activating it. this accounts for a collective 30,000,000 false positives worldwide every week. And it gets worse; everything picked up by the microphone during recording can be used by their development team, meaning that it is just sitting there in storage where anyone can listen.

          The camera on some models is worrying as well. While there are no reports of (overgrown corporation) snagging recordings of you getting a midnight snack, the same risks of webcams that you were constantly told about in cyber safety classes in elementary school still apply. Bad actors can easily take advantages of flaws in the design of your device, and blackmail you with the knowledge that you get up around 1 am and eat handfuls of shredded cheese.

          One way that someone can use your device without your permission is, get this, shining a laser at it.

         Imagine some guy with a van setting up a science fair project and getting your smart locks to open without even touching your front door, turning off any smart cameras you bought, then just walking in and nicking all of your stuff (except the smart speaker). Or tampering with your device so that they get in in the recording action. Because we all know that if you bought a smart speaker, you weren't smart enough to put an actual security system in. Don't get me started on "smart" locks that can be taken apart by any moron with a screwdriver.

         

Rao, Sonia. “In Today's Homes, Consumers Are Willing to Sacrifice Privacy for Convenience.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 12 Sept. 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/in-todays-homes-consumers-are-willing-to-sacrifice-privacy-for-convenience/2018/09/11/5f951b4a-a241-11e8-93e3-24d1703d2a7a_story.html.

Wang, R “Ray.” “Beware Trading Privacy for Convenience.” Harvard Business Review, 7 Aug. 2014, hbr.org/2013/06/beware-trading-privacy-for-con.

Ghosh, Dipayan, and Jim Steyer. “Kids Shouldn't Have to Sacrifice Privacy for Education.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 13 Dec. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/opinion/children-privacy-online.html.

Su, Jean Baptiste. “Why Amazon Alexa Is Always Listening To Your Conversations: Analysis.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 30 July 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2019/05/16/why-amazon-alexa-is-always-listening-to-your-conversations-analysis/#27ff00ca2378.

“Smart Speakers, Wake Words and Ghoul Oil.” Vocalize, 1 Nov. 2018, www.vocalize.ai/2018/11/01/wake-words-false-positives/.

Moore, Clayton. “What to Know About Smart Camera Privacy.” Digital Trends, Digital Trends, 29 Aug. 2019, www.digitaltrends.com/features/what-you-should-know-about-smart-camera-privacy/.

Dormehl, Luke. “Your Alexa Speaker Can Be Hacked with Malicious Audio Tracks. And Lasers.” Digital Trends, Digital Trends, 11 Nov. 2019, www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/new-vulnerabilities-smart-speakers-so-smart/.

All that we need now are ripper docs

In an era where the rich are only getting richer, soon they may be getting Better, faster, and stronger with biological enhancement, leaving the rest of us behind.

         Something that sounds like the premise to roughly 12 million different young adult novels, the idea of the rich genetically engineering and implanting enhancing technology may sound about as far fetched as a government deciding that having one hundred teens kill each other would be a good idea.
However, as more and more research is done on genetic engineering, soon the gap between regular people and trust fund babies will only be widened when they get yet more advantages; in the not so far future, the rich may be stronger, faster, and smarter than the rest of us by using their wealth.

         Most people know that one kid in school with rich parents that liked to flaunt their expensive clothes, high end phone, etc. Now imagine that kid as a bronze skinned demigod with an enhanced brain and muscles. Much worse, isn't it? It was bad enough when Richie Rich looked like the rest of us but with a higher thread count, we don't need for his parents to have decided they wanted a Heracles for a son. Naturally, this is an exaggeration, public school kids aren't that rich, but it highlights yet another upcoming case of the Haves v.s. Have Nots.

Look at this guy; he's probably rich enough to buy new airpods when their batteries die.

           Don't get me wrong, human enhancement is perfectly fine, and is the next "natural" step in technological progress. Blaming new technology for problems in society is a major Boomer move, and we all know how well that is going for them. But we are coming up to a period where those who can / whose parents could afford these enhancements have an even bigger lead on those who can't afford a yacht inside the pool on the deck of a larger yacht.

          These private school kids will become the new standard, and until those technologies become cheap enough for the common man (roughly several decades after the private school kids transcend this physical plane and leave us their Dyson spheres). An athlete without artificial blood and antelope legs has a significant disadvantage over those who do, and because those who do have those are rich, we can bet that they won't be disqualified from sporting events for long.

Tell me the word "Bio-Hacker" isn't cool without lying.

          Either way, we're getting closer to the premise of Cyberpunk anyways, which is always something I support, loss of morality be damned; It's just too damn cool

Miah, Andy. “The Ethics of Human Enhancement.” MIT Technology Review, MIT Technology Review, 8 Nov. 2019, www.technologyreview.com/s/602342/the-ethics-of-human-enhancement/.

Dickinson, Kevin. “Baleful Biomedical Technologies.” Big Think, Big Think, 5 Oct. 2018, bigthink.com/technology-innovation/fear-future-technology?rebelltitem=5#rebelltitem5.

Pearlman, Alex. “The Ethics of Experimentation: Ethical Cybernetic Enhancements.” Medium, Medium, 12 July 2017, medium.com/@lexikon1/the-ethics-of-experimentation-ethical-cybernetic-enhancements-48f9ad991769.

Miah, Andy, and University of Salford. “Ethics Issues Raised by Human Enhancement.” OpenMind, www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/articles/ethics-issues-raised-by-human-enhancement/.

Masci, David. “Human Enhancement: Scientific and Ethical Dimensions of Genetic Engineering, Brain Chips and Synthetic Blood.” Pew Research Center Science & Society, Pew Research Center, 16 Jan. 2019, www.pewresearch.org/science/2016/07/26/human-enhancement-the-scientific-and-ethical-dimensions-of-striving-for-perfection/.

Geier, Thom. “Disney's Animated 'Hercules' to Flex as Stage Musical This Summer.” TheWrap, 6 Feb. 2019, www.thewrap.com/hercules-disney-stage-musical-public-theater/.

Honoroff, Marshall. “Cyberpunk 2077 Preview.” Tomsguide, 2019, www.tomsguide.com/news/cyberpunk-2077-release-date-trailer-gameplay.