Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: internet of things

  • Dispelling the internet of snoops

    Dispelling the internet of snoops

    Last October New York lawyer Michael Price bought a new TV and what he read in the accompanying paperwork disturbed him.

    In “I’m terrified of my new TV: Why I’m scared to turn this thing on” Price described how Samsung’s privacy policy worried him, particularly the way the voice recognition data was handled, “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.”

    Disgraced former CIA director David Petraeus told a venture capital conference in 2012 that security agencies will track people through their dishwashers and Price pointed out a smart TV listening to a room’s conversations fits Petraeus’ vision nicely.

    At the time of its publication at the end of October Price’s story received some coverage among the information security, privacy and internet of things community then sank until last weekend when a tech site picked it up.

    At that stage, the story took on a new life with media outlets around the world running stories on how Samsung TVs are spying on customers.

    For Samsung the story is was major embarrassment and they were quick to point out they don’t actually collect data.

    To be fair to Samsung, they aren’t alone in having products that can listen to their users; almost every voice activated device has this capability and we can expect everything from smartphones to TVs and connected cars to be able to record voice and, through cameras, our movements.

    The marketing and social media industries, like General Petraeus, are enthusiastic about the surveillance opportunities of these devices; Facebook’s  Share and Discover feature for instance opens the microphone when a user starts typing an update to determine what music is being played.

    In the internet of things, it’s not just a smart TVs microphone that’s a potential problem as pretty much every connected device is generating information that can be used by government agencies, insurance companies and plaintiffs to track hapless users.

    Collecting this data also presents a range of risks beyond subpoenas from government agencies and angry litigants, for the vendors of smart devices there is also the problem of complying with various privacy rules, securely storing customers data and ensuring their business partners also respect user information.

    Samsung tried to manage this risk by adding a ‘don’t say stuff near our TV’ clause in the term and conditions, something that backfired dramatically and illustrates the impossibility of managing risk out of your business.

    While companies will struggle with the legalities of capturing massive amounts of customer data, the public in general have to face the risks of allowing everything from their kettles to their cars collecting information on them.

    The predicament for users is that turning off the ‘smart’ functions – assuming that is possible – remove much of the device’s functionality so the trade off between convenience, security will be a difficult compromise for many people.

    For the Internet of Things industry the task now is to convince the public their devices are trustworthy, stories like the Samsung TV snooping on people isn’t going to help their efforts.

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  • Links of the day: Connected cars and fast trains

    Links of the day: Connected cars and fast trains

    The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas kicks off today with thousands of product announcements at what is by far the biggest technology convention in the world. No doubt news from the show is going to dominate the tech media for the rest of the week.

    One of the biggest fields for tech vendors at CES will be Internet of Things with connected cars being in the spotlight with both BMW and General Motors leading the way.

    GM unveil their connected car of the future

    For some years GM have offered a connected car service with their OneStar system. At this year’s CES they’re showing how they intend to extend the service with more integrated social and navigation services.

    Driving the crashless car

    While we fixate on the driverless car of the future, the next few years are going to see the technologies be incrementally introduced into our motor vehicles. A good example of this is BMW’s Active Assist that CNET writer Wayne Cunningham claims he could not crash.

    The story points out Active Assist isn’t affordable in today’s cars but undoubtedly much of this technology will be standard in many automobiles by the end of the decade.

    California starts work on its high speed railway

    Cars aren’t the only thing in the news with California turning the first soil in its Los Angeles to San Francisco high speed railway.

    This troubled project has been years in the making and it’s not expected to be completed until the end of the next decade at a cost of over 60 billion dollars. An interesting aspect in the story is how communities in California’s Central Valley region are pinning their hopes of an economic resurgence from the project.

     

    Google takedown notices explode

    While cars and trains are being reinvented, the entertainment industry is still struggling with its disruption. Torrent freak reports Google is being overwhelmed with movie industry take downs notices.

    As the story suggests, this campaign is hurting Google’s relationship with the movie industry.

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  • Building safer roads and cars

    Building safer roads and cars

    Yesterday’s blog post considered how we might design a driverless car without the legacies of today’s vehicles.

    In the meantime we have to deal with our own human failings on the road and already tomorrow’s technologies are helping us drive better today.

    The day when driverless cars are the norm on our roads may be a generation, possibly further, away but many of the technologies that make autonomous vehicles possible are available today and are appearing in many new models.

    Last year the MIT Technology Review looked at BMW’s driverless car project and made the point that the technologies are still some years away from being adopted, the features being incorporated in today’s vehicles are already reducing accidents.

    Thanks to autonomous driving, the road ahead seems likely to have fewer traffic accidents and less congestion and pollution. Data published last year by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a U.S. nonprofit funded by the auto industry, suggests that partly autonomous features are already helping to reduce crashes. Its figures, collected from U.S. auto insurers, show that cars with forward collision warning systems, which either warn the driver about an impending crash or apply the brakes automatically, are involved in far fewer crashes than cars without them.

    This fits in with the vision described last year by Transport For New South Wales engineer John Wall who described how Australian roads can be made safer through the use of smarter cars, roadside sensors and machine to machine technology.

    As the MIT story illustrated, many of the technologies Wall discussed are being incorporated into modern cars with most of the features needed for largely autonomous driving being common by 2020.

    Comparing smart car technologies

    Like many of the things we take for granted in low end cars today most of the advanced features will be appearing in top of the line vehicles initially, we can also expect the trucking and logistic industries to be early adopters where there’s quantifiable workplace safety improvements or efficiency gains. Eventually many of these features will be standard in even the cheapest car.

    One thing is certain, while the driverless car is some way off we’re going to see the roads become safer as new technologies are incorporated into cars.

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  • Designing the self driving car

    Designing the self driving car

    “It certainly looks like an engineer designed it,” was one of the first reactions to Google’s announcement of its first full prototype self driving car.

    Certainly Google’s driverless vehicle looks odd, sort of like an overgrown carnival dodgem or an cartoon character police car.

    One of the interesting aspects of the driverless car is that many features into today’s automobiles aren’t necessary if you don’t have a driver – the obvious aspects being that a steering wheel, handbrakes and dashboard displays become unnecessary.

    Google have a video from earlier in the year showing the design and unveiling of the prototype. One of the fascinating aspects of the new device is how Google propose it can empower the sight impaired and disabled.

    The prototypes are stripped down vehicles with only a top speed of 25mph, with only two seats and little, if any luggage space. As the Oatmeal reports, riding in them is a little boring after the first few minutes.

    Looking at the Google vehicles it’s difficult not to think we could design something radically different if we moved away from our own prejudices of what a car should look like.

    At the beginning of last century, motor cars looked similar to the horse carts that were the standard transportation of the day; it was only in the 1930s the automobile fully took the form we recognise today.

    So it’s worth considering how we can optimise these vehicles to meet our needs and comfort rather than build them around the requirements of Twentieth Century technologies and usage.

    Tomorrow’s driverless cars will probably look very different to today’s vehicles and similarly our communities will adapt to a very different way of travelling. We will almost certainly find our cities will be very different when the driverless car becomes the norm.

    We need to think how to design them for that future, however far away it may be.

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  • At the mercy of machines

    At the mercy of machines

    Automation is the greatest change we’re going to see in business over the next decade as companies increasingly rely upon computers to make day to day decisions.

    Giving control to algorithms however comes with a set of risks which managers and business owners have to prepare for.

    Earlier this week the risks in relying on algorithms were shown when car service Uber’s management was slow to react to a situation where its formulas risked a PR disaster.

    Uber’s misstep in Sydney shows the weaknesses in the automated business model as its algorithm detected people clamouring for rides out of the city and applied ‘surge pricing’.

    Surge pricing is applied when Uber’s system sees high demand – typically around events like New Year’s Eve – although the company has previously been criticised for alleged profiteering during emergencies like Hurricane Sandy in New York.

    In the light of previous criticism, it’s surprising that Uber stumbled in Sydney during the hostage crisis. Shortly after criticism of the surge pricing arose on the internet, the company’s Sydney social media manager sent out a standard defence of surge pricing.

    That message was consistent with both Uber’s business model and how the algorithm that determines the company’s fares works; however it was a potential disaster for the business’ already battered reputation.

    An hour later the company’s management had realised their mistake and announced that rides out of Sydney’s Central Business District would be free.

    User’s mistake is a classic example of the dangers of relying solely on an algorithm to determine business decisions; while things will work fine during the normal course of business, there will always be edge cases that create perverse results.

    While machines are efficient; they lack context, judgement and compassion which exposes those who rely solely upon them to unforeseen risks.

    As the Internet of Things rolls out, systems will be deployed where responses will be based upon the rules of predetermined formulas.

    Businesses with overly strict rules and no provision for management intervention in extreme circumstances will find themselves, like Uber, at the mercy of their machines. Staking everything on those machines could turn out to be the riskiest strategy of all.

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