Smart-home IoT devices enroll consumers in surveillance-based markets without knowledge or consent

Evidence

Here is at least one endgame: the “smart home” and its “internet of things” are the canvas upon which the new markets in future behavior inscribe their presence and assert their demands in our most-intimate spaces. Key to the story is that all of this action is prosecuted in support of a larger market process that bets on the future of our behavior and over which we have no knowledge or control. Each node in the network—the vacuum cleaner, the mattress, the thermostat—must play its part, beginning with the frictionless rendition of behavior, as the whole team of seething insistent “smart” things joins the migration to surveillance revenues. As we are shorn of alternatives, we are forced to purchase products that we can never own while our payments fund our own surveillance and coercion. Adding insult to injury, data rendered by this wave of things are notoriously insecure and easily subject to breaches. Moreover, manufacturers have no legal responsibility to notify device owners when data are stolen or hacked. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 751

Categorization

• SEED: A ‘things you can never own’ angle: the convergence of product-as-service, IoT surveillance, and zero liability for data breaches makes for a sharp economic-writer’s essay.
• XREF: Connects to Zuboff’s earlier chapter on the ‘rendition’ of behavior and to ‘capacity surrender’ themes; also echoes the smart-home/near-future domestic surveillance strain in Parable of the Sower. — connects to: Consultants frame the connected car as a proving ground for IoT surveillance — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 673; Free Wi-Fi kiosks disguised as equity tools siphon data even from non-users. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 714; Home-device privacy policies extract biometric and audio data from entire households — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 741 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Smart home devices claim a limitless scope of domestic activities for rendition #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 814
• Smart-home devices now create immense knowledge stores with unowned power #corroborates (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 31
• Market forces redirected affective computing from empowerment into commercial surveillance #complicates (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 909