A sociotechnical threat model for AI-driven smart home devices

ddijksterhuis about 7 hours ago 61 commentsRead Article on arxiv.org

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IndySun•about 2 hours 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.

Aurornis•about 6 hours 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•about 5 hours 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•about 4 hours 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•about 6 hours ago

Someone should train models to generate clickbait using this.

gsibble•about 6 hours ago

Should domestic workers not be surveilled while doing their job?

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

swatcoder•about 6 hours ago

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

DriverDaily•about 6 hours 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.

roughly•about 5 hours ago

Trust involves risk - someone has to be willing to risk having their trust violated. The problem in modern western society is that we’ve decided we’re unwilling to take that risk, and therefore we’ve begun imposing what’s effectively a panopticon state on those with less power than us, with the consequence that the kinds of things we with power get away with fine - driving over the speed limit, being a couple minutes late to get a task done, getting sick or injured - cascade into severe circumstances by the cold logic of the system we’ve built to make ourselves feel better (job loss, money paying fines instead of food or medicine, etc).

The answer to this is if you don’t trust your domestic worker to not steal from you, either hire one you do or go do your own damn domestic work, and if the company you’re paying to provide a service doesn’t trust their own workers enough to not keep them under constant surveillance, go find one that does. The panopticon is a cheap answer that lets us pretend we don’t need to put the work in to manage our own lives while leveraging the power of the state to subjugate everyone further down the socioeconomic ladder from us.

majormajor•about 6 hours ago

Yeah the trust was gone pre-internet, pre-networked-cameras. People would've thrown doorbell cams on their front door at the same time as the deadbolt if they'd had the option.

Many of the high-trust smaller societies before those locks were actually pretty low privacy.

feanaro•about 6 hours ago

Surveillance is decidedly and completely unlike locks.

groundzeros2015•about 5 hours ago

Hmm, you think it has no psychological impact at all? Can you explain further?

causal•about 6 hours ago

So you can also destroy trust other ways. What’s your point?

socalgal2•about 5 hours 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.

paytonjjones•about 6 hours 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.

newspaper1•about 6 hours ago

I would absolutely support the surveillance of CEOs and board members. They have demonstrated themselves, as a class, to not be trustworthy. I think as a society, we should be reviewing Alex Karp's decision making for instance.

geraneum•about 6 hours ago

> I get the threat of pervasive AI

I think this contradicts with your first sentence.

chairmansteve•about 5 hours 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.

thatguy0900•about 6 hours 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-3•about 5 hours 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•about 5 hours 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?

lotsofpulp•about 4 hours 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.

bigyabai•about 6 hours 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•about 6 hours ago

Exactly. Won’t someone think of the children?

newspaper1•about 6 hours ago

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

t-3•about 5 hours 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.

fithisux•about 6 hours ago

Then, stay home if you feel unsafe.

Almondsetat•about 6 hours ago

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

This "article" is as good as a blog post

gcgbarbosa•about 5 hours ago

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

cs702•about 6 hours 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•about 6 hours ago

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

calmingsolitude•about 6 hours 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.

esrauch•about 6 hours ago

Can you spell out the ramifications for the plebs?

As far as I can tell home smart speakers are being used for warrantless mass surveillance, unlike Flock for example. Do you mean the possible future situation where they are?

BoingBoomTschak•about 6 hours ago

I think you're replying to sarcasm.

skrebbel•about 6 hours ago

I think you’re mistaking a shallow AI take for sarcasm.

exe34•about 6 hours ago

Give me a recipe for custard pie.

hahahaa•about 5 hours 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.