As the Internet moves from the cloud to the things we use, and a chip is embedded into every object, any sane person will wonder when the Terminator arrives. Who will guard against the things when they are all part of the Internet? I recently had the following colloquy with a reader, and he graciously consented to my publishing it. As our things become part and parcel of our persons, who will protect us from them? Who will protect us from those who would misuse them? More likely, who or what will protect us when they go awry?
"Hi Rick--
I know that you've got a great interest in wearable computing, and that is very important, but I think the larger and more encompassing field (and issue) is the Internet of Things ("IoT") and its security. For example, what happens when hackers break into self-driving cars and crash them or into internet-monitored heart pacemakers and crash them? It's not just our power grid or dams (or smartwatches) that are at risk, although we careful readers have been warned about those first two mega risks for some time now. (For another example, both because of folks' increasing understanding of governments' ability to fly drones and also because of folks' hearing the revelations by Snowden and others about governments' ability to secretly install complex malware into other countries' computer networks and devices, many people who think that there was governmental / dark state involvement in 9/11/01 believe that it is likely that some dark state forces--not those al Qaeda terrorists--were actually piloting one or more of the planes that crashed that day.) Although I don't think that particular conspiracy theory is likely (although I continue to wonder how WTC building #7 got knocked down), that phenomenon illustrates the increasing and realistic public awareness of the great harm that could be caused by an an IoT gone awry."
Me:
"I agree there is a danger; but, there will be security protocols. For instance, cars that are smart enough will have biological or, at the least, fingerprint or eye scan security. Just as guns can now be tailored to a specific human, so will smart "things". And I think that "wearable" computing will develop into implanted computer enhancement, which itself will have two step authentication protocols. There will always be evil people in the world. That is no reason to stop the advancement of humankind. Of course, my vote would be cryo freezing all criminals on the moon or on a spaceship constructed for the person. Or, we could cordon off New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco (sorry) and create city prisons. We have the technology. We can make it better. :-)"
Our discussion came from my friend's citation of a great article on the subject by Sean Martin at Law Technology News. If you are concerned about placing communicating computers inside of everything, you need to read it. The title of the articles says it all: "Who will pay the price when tragedy strikes the Internet of Things?"
