Video download link | md5sum 28f4f9d8fd0de8422327b6c0485a9a14 Smart People vs SpyHome Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: There's a renewed discussion or debate about so-called "smarthomes" (SpyHomes) because some gullible Microsofter put 'smart' things all over his own home and his own devices stopped working due to alleged racism

THE concept of a "smarthome" (SpyHome) was rarely covered here before, except perhaps in passing. Due to this story, however, the downsides were mentioned a lot over the past few days. People now realise they don't really control their own homes if they are "smart", i.e. remotely controlled by companies and governments.

To quote The Register (two days ago):

"This wasn’t just a simple inconvenience, though," he wrote. "I have a smart home, and my primary means of interfacing with all the devices and automations is through Amazon Echo devices via Alexa. This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions."

Jackson's smart home wasn't entirely non-functional during this period. Most of his smart home gear, he said, is self-hosted locally, via Apple HomeKit, and not tied to an Amazon cloud service. He could still interact with some devices through Apple's Siri assistant software.

Jackson attributes the suspension of his Amazon account – which controls his Echo hardware and Alexa software – to an Amazon driver misinterpreting an automated Eufy doorbell audio message.

"It is an object lesson in ownership," an associate has told us about this, "and if you don't control the code you don't control the machine. And, as RMS has pointed out for decades, if you don't control the machine, it controls you. It's a very important article in that way. Rossmann did a video about it, but writing is 1000% more useful in documenting the problem and identifying the solution (software freedom)."

So I've decided to do a video response to his video, followed by some text. "I'd recommend listening to Rossmann's pro-software freedom arguments in that video," the associate insists.

The video above is over half an hour long, but the gist of it is that companies can take over all "smart" things in your home. Heck, not only "GAFAM" can do this; the ISP can also sabotage your home, e.g. ahead of a home raid. Last year we saw alarming stories about energy suppliers taking over (remotely) people's appliances and controlling thermostats.

As the video above points out, some "old" or "dumb" things give a lot more control and freedom to the person who lives inside the home. Let's make it a trend to hold onto "traditional" appliances. Newer is not always better, except perhaps to powerful people who want us to rent, not own, everything in our lives. While mainstream media makes a lot of noise this year about buzzwords as an existential crisis it seems to be missing or ignoring more immediate, not hypothetical, threats. ⬆