Technocreep (10 page)

Progressive maintains that the Snapshot is a “win/win” because clients may get a discount, but no matter what it reveals, the Snapshot data alone will not make their rates go up. Prospective clients who test it for a month are then given a rate quote and the option to keep using the device.

A voluntary technology like this can easily become “
de facto
mandatory.” Since insurance spreads risk over a pool of drivers, declining to have the monitor installed may eventually lead companies to make assumptions about your driving habits. There is no doubt that new cars will have the ability to collect and send out data about your driving habits. The big question is—who will have access to it?

The first documented use of evidence from a Snapshot device in court was in a murder trial in Parma Heights, OH. Michael Beard was accused of suffocating his infant daughter. He remembered that he was on the 30-day Progressive Snapshot trial, and the timestamps in it provided evidence (to the jury's satisfaction) that he was not in the house long enough to do the deed.

Ironically, “Beard's driving made him ineligible for any rewards,” according to a published report on the case. However, when he remembered that he had forgotten to take out the Snapshot, “I knew if I could retrieve the information I could prove I wasn't there. Progressive told me that after so long they usually clear the information—but when they told me they still had it, ‘Oh my God' was all I could say.”
116

Progressive is not the only insurance company getting on the car tracker bandwagon. In 2010, Allstate announced a similar device it calls Drivewise. Like Progressive, Allstate avoids using GPS to track drivers. But that might change. Allstate's CEO Tom Wilson has been quoted as saying “we're going to do something with teen drivers so you can actually know where your kids are if they're driving.”
117

There are already several apps that do just that. Most of them rely on the fact that the average teenager would rather leave the house naked than without a cell phone. Nervous Moms and Dads can, openly or secretly, install GPS tracking software on their children's phones. Life360, whose basic version is free, combines data from smartphones and car tracking devices, just like they use in the movies. Results are neatly displayed on a web page or via the smartphones app itself.

Most rental cars have a hidden tracking device so the company can find their vehicle if some deadbeat leaves it abandoned in a ditch. This is a separate GPS from the one that they rent to you at the counter. You can, and probably should, clear out the data from that one before you return the car. The other one is hidden and not accessible to the renter.

According to a report in the trade publication
Auto Rental News
, some agencies even have a remote kill switch on their vehicles. “Al Llanes of Global Rental Car of South Florida Inc. restricts his renters to the state of Florida,” the magazine reports.
118
“He uses his tracking system to set up a virtual perimeter (or ‘geofence') that alerts him when the state line is crossed.” What happens when the car goes over the line? The article says that Llanes remotely the disables the vehicle, and usually receives a phone call from the renter. He offers to restart the vehicle, but points out that there will be an extra mileage charge.

On the other side of the U.S., the out-of-state mileage charge struck renter Ron Lee, who was presented with a bill for over $1,700 for what he thought was about a $150 rental. The difference was an obscure dollar a mile surcharge for taking the car out of the state of California. The vehicle's GPS ratted him out.
119

Other rental car companies have tried adding “speeding surcharges” based on GPS data collected by the car. In a Connecticut case, an independent hearing officer estimated that the real cost of speeding in terms of extra wear and tear on the vehicle was thirty-seven cents, well below the $150 that the company was charging as a speeding penalty. Acme Rent-A-Car was ordered to stop fining ­speeders.
120

Aside from privacy concerns, a bigger issue arises from what a rental car company might do with all that data it collects on its customers. Even in aggregated form, with no personal information attached, the data that rental companies collect can be very valuable. A log of precisely where thousands of rental cars have been driven, where they have stopped to admire the view, and where they buy gas would be very valuable to someone trying to choose a site for a roadside service area. Just as the ancillary revenue from running an airline reservation system can out-pace the profits from flying planes, selling data on customer behavior may become a major cash cow for car rental firms and other travel providers. With the right tools, someone might be able to “torture” the aggregated data to find out about a specific individual.

While working with employees of a mid-sized Canadian city, I asked them what disturbing things they see in their jobs. “City vehicles all have GPS sensors on them,” one employee piped up. “The snowplow drivers are afraid they'll get in trouble if they take a break to warm up and grab a coffee.” Given that this city endures major snowstorms and Arctic temperatures, you might think a trip to Tim Horton's is a reasonable request. The problem is that there is no clear policy. Drivers know the unflinching eye of the GPS system is always on them, and they fear it.

Public servants trying to solve real problems increasingly find themselves relying on technology that has the potential for serious abuse. A well-intentioned plan by British Columbia TransLink to use cell-phone “pings” from drivers' phones to improve its real-time traffic maps raised privacy hackles. Even though the transit operator swore that nobody could be identified, people howled in protest.
121

Intellistreets street lamps, manufactured by Illuminating Concepts of Farmington Hills, MI, dispense a lot more than illumination. They are actually sensor-enabled two-way communications devices. They can broadcast music, and even tell buildings to dim their lights when there are no people around. Security guards can talk through their “Concealed Placement Speakers” as disembodied voices.

The manufacturer's home page also offers “a wide range of sensors (that) can be utilized for exciting pedestrian user interaction.” Accessories for your new streetlamp include CBRNE (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosives) detectors as well as a “shared data strategy (that) analyzes images between sensors and can direct PTZ (pan/tilt/zoom) cameras and situational awareness to the end user.” If your staff or other persons of interest (for example, prisoners) are sporting RFID tags, this system can also identify and track them for you.

I witnessed firsthand just how exciting, if only marginally effective, a talking security system can be while walking through a public housing project in Washington, D.C. Probably unable to afford those $3,000 streetlamps, the complex was using old fashioned security cameras with nearby wall mounted loudspeakers, all connected to an unseen guard room. “Hey, you in the red hoodie—no skateboarding here.” A shocked look from the kid was followed by … more skateboarding. I did not stick around to see if live security action followed.

The U.K. has also dabbled in talking surveillance cameras, even holding “competitions for children to become the voice of the camera.”
122
Presumably having your grandkid tell you to pick up after your dog will have a stronger impact than the lady who tells you to “Mind the Gap” or the man who urges you to “Please Stand Clear of the Closing Doors.”

I give a lot of talks to school groups, and often learn amazing things from them. One eager sixth grader asked me, “Did you know that there are cameras in the eyes of the mannequins at The Bay?” referring to Canada's iconic department store. I said I didn't think that was true and he quickly replied, “Yes, there are! That's how my sister got busted for shoplifting.” The teacher stepped in to end this over-sharing of family secrets.

If we allow what technology makes possible, your nearest streetlight or trash bin may have the same capabilities envisioned by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham for his Panopticon, the perfectly designed prison in which jailers manage their charges by the simple stratagem of being all-seeing while remaining unseen themselves.

Yet, it would be oversimplifying to suggest that we are moving to a world of government wardens and citizen prisoners. After all, many of the security measures that are put in place are put there at the request of citizens like us to attempt to deter crime, terrorism, and other bad behavior.

I once got to chat with Anthony Zuiker, creator and executive producer of the
CSI:Crime Scene Investigation
television dramas. He assured me that “everything we do on the show is based in science, but sometimes we do speed it up for television.” He also said he is well aware of the “CSI effect”—the rising expectation that high tech forensics will be available and applied even in minor cases. People who have a hundred-dollar GPS unit stolen from their car are thus outraged when police don't dust for fingerprints or search for traces of the DNA left by the thief.

Our growing reliance on “always on surveillance” is illustrated by the tragic case of teenager Kendrick Johnson, who was found dead, wrapped in a gym mat, at his school in Georgia. His parents demanded the video from the school's surveillance cameras, even launching a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #giveusthetapes when they were not immediately provided.

When police released the evidence, there were gaps that some said were due to the fact that the cameras were motion activated. However, the victim's parents believed that there was tampering. CNN took the tapes to Seattle-based Grant Fredericks, a certified forensic video analyst who also played a role in the analysis of the Vancouver 2011 riot tapes. Fredericks found that the videos did not appear to have been edited, but he also questioned the quality of the data since it was not provided in its original form.
123
We not only expect that surveillance footage will be there to help us solve crimes—we get angry when it does not show us what we want to see.

Cameras and sensors in smartphones have already been pressed into service as medical devices, testing eyesight (Vision Test 3.0 was the iPhone “medical app of 2010”), blood pressure, glucose levels, and even heart rhythms. However, no smartphones sensors can approach the sheer existential weirdness of the “smart toilets” sold mainly in Japan. One, from Toto, weighs you when you sit down, checks your body temperature, and does on-the-spot urinalysis. Some of its throne-like competitors will also send all of this information electronically to your computer or directly to your doctor's office.

According to one report, Kyushu-based Toto, which introduced its first smart toilet in 2005, has racked up 10,000 units of sales, even though the toilets can cost $5000 or more. And, yes, they can be hacked. It is done by Bluetooth. The MySatis Android app was designed to give you full control of your pricey Satis commode, even allowing you to play the perfect music during your experience and keep a “toilet diary.” A new report explains that “the advanced ‘Satis' automatic toilet can be remotely operated by a free app available on Android smartphones that lets pranksters raise and lower the toilet set as well as trigger a bidet function and flush.”
124

If you live long enough, you may well wind up with sensors in your underwear, or your adult diapers. A Spanish company SiempreSecos, which translates as “always dry,” has created a urine sensor with a companion wristband to alert you, or your caregiver, that it is time for a change. Let's just hope you're not sitting down to a formal dinner or something when the thing goes off.
125

There is definitely an upside to sensor technology. David Webster, a partner in the California-based design firm IDEO, waxes poetic about “being able to capture and track and pattern-recognize body data, which can be measured by devices in and on the body, and activated as data streams in the cloud.”
126

Webster predicts that sensor technology will lead to a new era of “precision medicine” with “the potential to change everything in a really positive way.” Having a sensor in your body that detects when you are sick may be great, if it alerts you and you take appropriate action. If it sends clandestine messages to your insurance company, or even your favorite pizza parlor, however, then it crosses the line from useful to insidious.

In the chilling YouTube video “Ordering Pizza in the Future,” a fictitious caller tries to order a Double Meat Pizza, but the order taker knows far too much about him. He is told “there will be a new $20 charge” because “your medical records indicate you have high blood pressure and extremely high cholesterol. Luckily we have a new agreement with your national health care provider that allows us to sell you double meat pies as long as you agree to waive all future claims of liability.”
127

The pizza girl also knows his waist size, his recent library checkouts, and that his credit cards are maxed out. As a final blow, he is informed that there will be a danger zone charge due to the fact that he now lives in a high crime zone due a recent robbery.

The ease and cheapness of connecting everything to everything means there is no technical reason why anything digital in your life cannot be connected to anything else, with or without your knowledge.

Over a decade ago, appliance makers were eagerly anticipating the day when the refrigerator would tell the stove what it has on hand (“beer, expired milk, baking soda”) and then they would decide what you could make for dinner (“nothing worth eating”). Perhaps they might even send you a text suggesting a visit to the supermarket, or, for that matter, place the grocery order for you.