TECHNOLOGY
it adheres primarily to US law and privacy standards and (ii) it might give you up to police if asked. “We may consult with and disclose unlawful conduct to law enforcement authorities and pursuant to valid legal process, we may cooperate with law enforcement authorities to prosecute users who violate the law,” the company says in a clear warning. A few months ago, the office of the Irish data protection regulator announced that it would “step up” audits of certain ‘internet of things’ firms after a survey of 300 connected devices found “alarming shortfalls in the management of personal data by developers and suppliers”. Separately, Helen Dixon’s office is involved in an enquiry into Yahoo for reportedly handing over access to customer accounts to US authorities late last year without informing its users or European regulators. But the bigger question is whether objects in our homes and on our wrists should be legitimately yankable for the data they hold on us. If we think some circumstances merit it, how extreme must those circumstances be?
hand over access to your smart thermostat’s backup files to an insurance company if that might yield a clue as to how the fire started? If authorities suspected arson, should they be allowed to request access to such files?
Risley, given a two-year suspended sentence based on evidence from her Fitbit device.
How about other incidents, such as domestic abuse? If one spouse claims to have been beaten, assaulted or raped, should smart gadgets in the home, which might potentially help corroborate or disprove the claims, be admissible as evidence? Should they be the legitimate subject of a warrant?
The woman claimed to have been assaulted in her home but a court found that she had made the episode up after investigating police used evidence from her Fitbit health tracker to disprove her whereabouts and her movements. In that case, the woman (foolishly) consented to police parsing the Fitbit. But to what extent can authorities expect to rely on such ‘witness’ devices in future?
This isn’t an academic question. A 2015 Pennsylvania case saw a woman, Jeannine
Fitbit is an interesting case. It makes two things clear in its terms and conditions: (i)
FEBRUARY 2017
The degrees of answer to this may resemble the split in opinion that occurred in the Apple iPhone privacy case of 2016. There, Apple executives up to and including Tim Cook said that they would not provide a “back door” entrance into iPhone encryption to FBI investigators prosecuting a domestic terrorism case. The public cheered and booed in almost equal numbers. It was a case of privacy versus security. On that occasion, privacy won the day. But for how much longer? Here, the issue may not be tested until a painful outlier case, such as a child kidnapping, crops up. ■
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