The following news item from the US reminds us that sexual predators exist in our reality. Some of them use the web to target and molest children. Connecting devices like video baby monitors to the web is, therefore, a terrible idea.
The present plan for the ‘Smart Grid’ – where all appliances (not just baby monitors) are connected to the web and usage data is relayed wirelessly to third parties – will introduce billions (if not trillions) of new threat vectors to the internet for hackers and predatory paedophiles to exploit.
Via one or more wireless Smart Meters in your home, sensitive data about your energy, appliance and device usage will be broadcast to anyone capable of intercepting the signal. Whilst not all appliances and devices have cameras, microphones or speakers, they do all have the capability to reveal sensitive personal information about you and your family’s behaviour at home.
What time of the day do children’s devices such as a child’s first CD player or games console typically get used? For how long? When are children’s TV programmes usually watched? What programmes are watched most often? How often are both parents are home? Are the children ever left alone? How long for? What time do they usually leave or arrive home? Do they ever take their electronic devices to other kids’ houses? How far away do they live?
Data points like these help to build a picture of your family’s private life at home. With Smart Meters, this information is collected every minute and broadcast to your energy provider. If your power company can collect, model, profile and exploit this information, deviants like the guy featured below can. It is just a question of how and when.
Smart Meters are a safety hazard and a threat to security. You have the right to refuse Smart Meters – we strongly urge you to do so.
HOUSTON, TX (KTRK/CNN) – Aug 13, 2013
It was a terrifying experience for the parents of two young children after their baby monitor was hacked. What the hacker did next is even more disturbing.
The story has a creepy factor. The father in northwest Harris County says he and his wife heard a detached voiced saying sexual things to their two-year-old daughter and it was coming from her room.
For two years, Marc Gilbert and his wife have come to rely on their Internet cameras.
“We almost couldn’t live without it,” he said.
With them, they could watch their two toddlers in their rooms. But over the weekend, someone else was watching, too.
“It felt like somebody broke into our house,” Gilbert said.
Gilbert says he first heard a voice from down the hall. As he and his wife got closer, what it was saying got worse.
“He said, ‘Wake up Allyson, you little (expletive),'” Gilbert said.
And soon he knew it was coming from the camera.
“I see the camera move on us,” Gilbert said.
Gilbert immediately pulled the plug and started doing research. He believes someone hacked his router as well as the camera. The person could see Allyson’s name on the bedroom wall to call her by it.
He now wants to warn parents about the danger.
Read more: Hacker taunts child over baby monitor – KPTV – FOX 12.
For peoples’ information I e-mailed British Gas telling them that I didn’t want a smart meter and they responded, politely but belatedly, saying that they had removed me from their roll-out programme. They also said that if I received a call from themselves in the future to just say I had been removed from the programme.
Thank-you for all that you are doing.
Robert D’Arcy.
A small price to pay for the convenience of wireless. Not
The extent of this sickness called Pederasty practised intergenerationally over thousands of years by those creatures responsible for all plagues on this planet is astonishing. Relatively few can and do control humanity as mere cattle (even cattle aren’t ‘mere’ cattle but sensitive conscious beings with more in common with us than we like to acknowledge)and still the people allow themselves to be fooled into betraying their young for the sake of convenience, security or mere novelty.
This control dynamic has gone way too far for way too long and with the superpower of technologies, ordering babies like pizzas for consumption has never been easier.
How to turn the tide, when the people are too zoned out to notice or care? Everyone’s hooked on their cellphones and wifi – even if and when they are made aware of the lethal hazards, they’re too apathetic to give them up and too scared of the consequences of doing so as they’ve no creative faculties left within their vaccine and tv-addled brains.
I’m wifi and cellphone free but so what? I’ve neighbours to deploy metres and all the rest of it and they really don’t give a stuff beyond the big sell of how they’ll save money etc etc.
Wifi and cellphone free, but surf the Internet.
Yes, I eat and breath too, amazing isn’t it? I find nourishment, knowledge and education this way and have done since the internet launched. It’s still a universal library, yet perhaps not for much longer. Like local libraries, degenerating into trash fantasy fiction.
The new XBox ‘one’ will apparently feature a motion detector type camera which uses players movements to control games (in the same way that controllers normally do.)
However it has been stated that the XBox will not work unless the camera is plugged in and the console is connected to the internet, even in games where you don’t need either the camera or online connection for the game, so there is a lot of talk that Microsoft will be ‘watching’ players constantly and gathering data about them. So much for their ‘Your Privacy Is Our Priority’ ads.
I imagine ‘Smart’ TVs with inbuilt webcams may have the same premise… them watching us while we watch their crap, can’t wait 😉
Back to the beauty of the cathode ray tube for you then?
A simple piece of tape stuck over the Xbox camera will solve that problem. Low tech is wonderful and better for you!
that doesn’t kill the mike……and even thick electrical tape…..light can still get through it if it’s bright enough, depends how sensitive the cameras are as well and whether they can ‘uptune’ the sensitivty of it……i can’t think str8 these days, i used to be quite technical and there was a time i cd have told you the tech jargon, but nowhere near as smart as i used to be….
‘Fraid I don’t believe that….surprised they would say that, but sooner or later it will be forced on you….
why have gas anyway? pigyobs use that as an excuse to break into people’s homes anyway, even on all electric estates….and there’s also those stories on the news every two yearish on average now, house blows up, kills lots of people, no actual investigation whether incompetent workmanship/ manslaughter or murder, nobody ever names and shamed never mind held accountable…..
Just one thing I’d say about this clip. The girls father states that she was born deaf, if that is the case, why is there what appears to be a radio/cd player on her dressing table?.
Please don’t get me wrong, I fully support the campaign to stop smart meters, but if I’m right about this clip, it could give the pro smart meter people some ammunition.
Hi John,
That’s a good observation – but the article mentions that she had hearing assistance through aids but she wasn’t wearing them at the time.
Thanks for the comment.