Your Nest Cam doesn’t have to be an informant.
If the U.S. government plans on using the Internet of things to spy on people, there are still steps companies and consumers can take to stop it.
As part of testimony submitted to the Senate’s Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, James Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence, wrote, “In the future, intelligence services might use the (Internet of things) for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials.”
While this statement, first noticed by The Guardian, won’t exactly come as a shock to civil liberties groups, the average consumer might be surprised to hear the potential privacy threat so boldly stated.
…
Nuala O’Connor, the president and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit that focuses on individual liberty in a digital world, says Clapper’s remarks are an example of the blurring of the lines between the private sector and the public sector, which she calls the most compelling public policy issue of the decade.
“This is an early warning sign for companies that they need to have really clear policies and technical boundaries and systems in place if they do not intend to be a permanent pipeline of data flowing directly to the government,” O’Connor says.
