You Are Being Watched (Script & Sources)

Good Morning, Bad News: we’re talking about someone being able to externally disable your car’s brakes while you’re driving, or hacking enough major appliances at the same time to create an electrical spike and bring down a power station. These are real things that we know can happen based on security failures we’ve already seen. Let’s talk about the very real threat of being surrounded by a massive network of smart devices that are always watching and listening to you. And since tech security is effectively unregulated, gaining access is often as easy as scanning a network for open connections or brute forcing a password in a few seconds.

Developing security takes time and money, but tech companies are singularly focused on producing devices as fast and as cheaply as possible, which means that they’re left with tons of vulnerabilities. As the internet of things invades our lives through smart thermostats, pacemakers, cars, security cameras, and toasters, all of them are riddled with easily exploitable security holes while collecting mountains of personal and identifiable data about you. What’s scarier is that not only can anyone access your data, they can access the device itself and how it functions, creating a nightmare of vulnerabilities around your privacy and physical safety.

And don’t forget, the sensors we’re surrounded by aren’t limited to just video and audio - fitness trackers can now use your biometric data to determine what mood you’re in, or if you’re sleeping or having sex.

Tech companies are injecting always-on sensors and remote access software into billions of devices on an unimaginable scale. They make most of their money by selling your private data, and the more intimate that data is, the more money they make. We know, for a fact, that they are unbelievably bad at protecting you, and when they fail the consequences are devastating.

Back in 2015, researchers proved that by exploiting a firmware update in a Jeep, they could control the steering, engine, brakes, transmission, even the windshield wiper, and they could do all of it remotely through a cellular network. Hackers have gotten into surveillance networks, baby monitors, even smart TVs have microphones that can be remotely accessed. One wild example, smart thermometer in a fish-tank at a Las Vegas casino was used to breach the casino’s network, access a high-roller database, and then steal that information through the thermometer.

And as technology advances, the ability to exploit those vulnerabilities gets easier, while the damage that can be caused by them gets worse. 20 years ago, it took 36 months to brute force a password with a number in it, today it can take less than an hour. And 20 years ago the worst you could do was read someone’s emails, or make a virus that sent spam or bricked your computer. Today you can gain control of cars, commercial airplanes, even massive critical infrastructure like power plants.

In 2016 in Finland, smart thermostat systems were hacked and disabled leaving apartment buildings freezing cold for nearly a week. Imagine hackers or even foreign governments, being able to do the same to an already failing powergrid that's built by the lowest bidder and riddled with security holes - like we have in Texas.

Yes this technology is useful, but how it’s collected, how it’s stored, and how it’s ultimately used is a total black box. They are also not really accountable for the mistakes they make because, as we saw during the Facebook privacy hearings, Congress has no idea what the hell they’re talking about when it comes to technology or digital security. Apple is in hot water right now for launching an algorithm to scan your photos for explicit content, ostensibly to protect children, but we all know it can and will be used for more. Not to mention that there is a long history of machine learning flagging non-sexual queer content as sexually explicit. And while we’re on the subject, when companies tell you that your data is being collected or processed anonymously, that’s simply not true. It’s terrifyingly easy to use anonymous data to re-identify the person behind it.