Search
Content type: Advocacy
Background
In August 2022, Amazon announced that they had entered into a definitive merger agreement to acquire iRobot, a company that specialises in designing and building consumer robots. The transaction was formally notified to the European Commission on 1 June 2023, while the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has already launched an investigation into the transaction since April 2023.
We believe that this acquisition is likely to significantly impede effective competition in and…
Content type: Report
Introduction
Several policy initiatives are in progress at the EU level. They seek to address the sustainability of connected devices such as smartphones, tablets and smart speakers. While initiatives to extend the useful life of hardware are important, software must not be ignored. Almost any digital device with which we interact today relies on software to function, which acts as a set of instructions that tells the hardware what to do. From smart thermostats to smart speakers, to our…
Content type: Press release
A YouGov survey commissioned by PI shows that consumers expect their smartphones, computers, smart TVs and gaming consoles to receive security updates for a much longer period than what several manufacturers actually provide, leaving consumers with expensive tech that is vulnerable to cyberattacks.
The majority of consumers in the survey assumed their devices would be protected beyond two years, but current industry practices fail to meet these expectations. PI investigated the software…
Content type: Examples
An engineering and computer science professor and his team from The Ohio State University discovered a design flaw in low-powered Bluetooth devices that leaves them susceptible to hacking.
Zhiqiang Lin, associate professor of computer science and engineering at the university, found the commonly used Bluetooth Low Energy devices, such as fitness trackers and smart speakers, are vulnerable when they communicate with their associated apps on the owner’s mobile phone.
"There is a fundamental…
Content type: Case Study
In 2015, James Bates was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Victor Collins. Collins was found floating face down in Bates’ hot tub in November 2015. Bentonville police served two search warrants ordering Amazon to turn over the “electronic data in the form of audio recordings, transcribed records, text records and other data contained on the Amazon Echo device” in Bates’ home.
The reason for the warrants? According to the police, just because the device was in the house that…
Content type: Long Read
By Valentina Pavel, PI Mozilla-Ford Fellow, 2018-2019
Our digital environment is changing, fast. Nobody knows exactly what it’ll look like in five to ten years’ time, but we know that how we produce and share our data will change where we end up. We have to decide how to protect, enhance, and preserve our rights in a world where technology is everywhere and data is generated by every action. Key battles will be fought over who can access our data and how they may use it. It’s time to take…
Content type: News & Analysis
Image: Anatomy of an AI system: a map of the many processes — extracting material resources, data, and human labor — that make an Amazon Echo work. Credit: Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler
With over 6.3 million Amazon Echo devices worldwide, there is a good chance these constantly active devices will record criminal behavior.
Bloomberg, who recently reported on yet another creepy feature, that Amazon workers are listening to what you tell Alexa, were told by workers…
Content type: Report
When you rent a car at the airport, use a car-share for a family day trip, one of the first things you are likely to do before setting off on your journey, is to connect your phone to the car. You switch on the Bluetooth and see a list of other people’s phones that were previously connected - Mike’s iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, Bikerboy_Troi, Dee Dee. You input your journey into the navigation, perhaps noticing stored locations of previous drivers.
Seems fairly innocuous? Wrong. Your name and…
Content type: Case Study
Invisible and insecure infrastructure is facilitating data exploitation
Many technologies, including those that are critical to our day-to-day lives do not protect our privacy or security. One reason for this is that the standards which govern our modern internet infrastructure do not prioritise security which is imperative to protect privacy.
What happened?
An example of this is Wi-Fi, which is now on its sixth major revision (802.11ad). Wi-Fi was always designed to be a verbose in…
Content type: Case Study
Our connected devices carry and communicate vast amounts of personal information, both visible and invisible.
What three things would you grab if your house was on fire? It’s a sure bet your mobile is going to rank pretty high. It’s our identity, saying more about us than we perhaps realise. It contains our photos, calendar, internet browsing, locations of where we go, where we’ve been, our emails, social media. It holds our online banking, notes with half written poems, shopping lists, shows…
Content type: News & Analysis
The connectivity afforded by the internet has changed the world forever. While the increasing ‘corporatization’ of what many still feel is an open, non-hierarchical, largely uncensored and unfiltered ecosystem, this is increasingly not the case. The emergence of the ‘Internet of Things’ will soon throw into sharp relief who owns the internet and who owns the data we all generate when using the internet. Companies today have a vested interest in portraying their products as safe and…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy can be seen as a reflex of innovation. One of the seminal pieces on the right to privacy as the 'right to be let alone emerged in response to the camera and its use by the tabloid media. Seminal jurisprudence is in response to new surveillance innovations... though often with significant delays.
While one approach would be to say that privacy is a norm and that with modern technologies the norm must be reconsidered and if necessary, abandoned; I think there’s an interesting idea around…