Do You Own That Apple Laptop?

It took only 60 seconds for Regis McKenna and Ridley Scott to cement the vision of Apple Computer as destroyer of evil empires with its 1984 Super Bowl Macintosh commercial.

Judging by the drumbeats on the blogosphere, Apple may be within a few internet seconds of being unmasked as a member of the very Legion of Evil it sought to vanquish. Logging browser URLs into its servers? Storing your text documents on the cloud? Without your knowledge? Tracking your every move with its IoT apps?

Before we start tossing out the finger pointing apologetics for reading every last word of all Terms of Service agreements we come across, let us ask this: do I agree to some hidden TOS when I buy a piece of Apple hardware?

Using software these days is a Faustian Bargain. The creators of the software assume that they can never be recoup what it cost to build (a vanity thing, I imagine), so a little trade is arranged to help even the score: you give up the right to privacy in exchange for using the software- even if your bought it. Pride goeth before a fall.

We assumed that hardware did not fall into thisBargain and we may have been wrong. Apple seems to have now separated the user experience from the hardware itself and justified the data collection there with a Stalinesque argument about it being for our own good. Sound familiar?

Apple Computer never seemed to miss an opportunity to lambast IBM Corporation for its corporate persona and reputation. IBM's history of having complete control over its installed equipment base and how it would be used made them an easy target for poking and prodding in media campaigns. IBM knew what the customer needed and provided it for their own good. Freedom! Democracy of data! Independence! Privacy! Apple!

Look at Apple now: operating a walled garden ecosystem that becomes more difficult to leave with each passing day. Is this another opportunity for another rebel to stand up against an evil empire? Only this time, rebel may be the people themselves. For our own good.

#apple   #security   #walledgarden   #ibm  #ridleyscott   #regismckenna   #privacy  

The Internet of Things is a Bad Thing

 internet of things is a terribly bad idea. It's fun prognosticating about the shapes of things to come and the excitement level rises when we describe that democratic world where all devices and all people are connect, as one.

There is one major problem with this IOT concept: the internet. Much as we love the reach and appearance of democratization on this global network, it's security is frail, sieve-like and mostly broken.

Before the internet, distributed systems in the corporate world were robust, impenetrable and secure. And expensive. The deep layered security model of Ray Ozzie's Lotus Notes comes to mind.

Enter the internet circus. Purchase internet access from a service provider in somebody's basement and the flower shop downtown could be as connected and present as the largest corporation. We lowered the deep security models and raised up beacons daring people to exploit us.

Now we come to that IOT thing which offers to connect mostly devices built with simplistic architecture- they are bit and clock aware to the extreme- that offers little or no security. Who would want to hack a stove? Unless one is designing life critical devices such as heart pacemakers, security is not there.

Connecting insecure devices opens the door to exploitation and invasions privacy which will surpass anything we have experienced to date. 

If we want to prognosticate about the shapes of things to come, let us imagine a world where one's heart pacemaker or one's electrical distribution system can be ransomed to the highest bidder. This is not going to work out well for us.

#security   #internet   #internetofthings   #lotusnotes  #securitymodel   #embeddedsystems   #devices