[Cryptography] Great IoS quote from LCA 2017

[Henry Baker]

At 01:37 AM 1/30/2017, Peter Gutmann wrote:
>Christopher Biggs, "The Internet of Scary Things":
>
>"The Internet of Things is a new name for embedded systems that don't really work properly".
>
>That's so very true, most of the IoS stuff I have quite literally is "embedded systems that don't work properly".

Sadly, after touring the exhibits at CES2017 this month, too many of the "embedded systems" work just fine; their biggest problem is *whom they work for*, because it isn't ordinary consumers like you and me.

I own a relatively small single family home; why on Earth would I (or anyone else, for that matter) need to have second-by-second information about my natural gas consumption (queue recent 'gaslighting' thread) ?

Who in their right mind would allow a Bluetooth-controlled "smart pillow" -- complete with an always-on microphone -- to upload all this audio data to "the cloud" to tell them that they snore at night ?

The following is a true story; I can supply you with all of the details if you wish:

One CES2017 booth had a Bluetooth-controlled vibrator.  By itself, this is unremarkable -- such devices have been on the market for several years.  However, this particular company took things to a whole new level: a Strava-type *social network* on which one can not only upload their own activities for leaderboards, *but also download midi-like sequences from other Bluetooth vibrator users*.  Apparently, music hasn't the only charms to soothe the savage beast!

Forget privacy; we now have an exhibitionist society where the lack of privacy has become a feature, not a bug.  Perhaps this is the only way to defuse surveillance in the post-Snowden world: everyone acts so outrageous that the only people who want to hide actually have nothing (unusual) to hide.