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from the my-thermostat-is-holding-me-hostage dept.
In more than 30 interviews with The New York Times, domestic abuse victims, their lawyers, shelter workers and emergency responders described how the technology was becoming an alarming new tool. Abusers - using apps on their smartphones, which are connected to the internet-enabled devices - would remotely control everyday objects in the home, sometimes to watch and listen, other times to scare or show power. Even after a partner had left the home, the devices often stayed and continued to be used to intimidate and confuse.
Connected home devices have increasingly cropped up in domestic abuse cases over the past year, according to those working with victims of domestic violence. Those at help lines said more people were calling in the last 12 months about losing control of Wi-Fi-enabled doors, speakers, thermostats, lights and cameras. Lawyers also said they were wrangling with how to add language to restraining orders to cover smart home technology.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by theluggage on Tuesday June 26 2018, @01:51PM (11 children)
Or, they could maybe wrangle the vastly easier problem of getting their clients some technical help with removing/disabling the devices, changing passwords etc. Ultimately, this should be no different from changing locks or telephone numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday June 26 2018, @02:16PM (2 children)
Still need the language in case something is missed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday June 26 2018, @06:33PM (1 child)
Because we all know that restraining orders are soooooo effective.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 27 2018, @11:28AM
They're a lot better than nothing. Because now, with the legal system involved, the potential cost of continuing to harass the ex-spouse can mean fines and prison time.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday June 26 2018, @02:20PM (2 children)
I agree, though they're probably doing this in addition to working on restraining orders. (And I would challenge "vastly easier" as a characterization. One likely involves drafting new boilerplate language that could just be stuck in a standard restraining order. The other likely requires very specific interventions and an understanding of the specific tech in the home.)
The whole point of a "restraining order" is to practice prior restraint and prevent harassment from continuing. It's clear if you read TFA that many of the victims here didn't even know the capabilities of the smart devices that were installed in their homes, so they were surprised when their systems were suddenly manipulated remotely.
If you've ever had a friend who was the victim of harassment, you'd understand the paranoia that can set in. This abuse of home tech sounds like an absolute nightmare to me for victims. The whole point of restraining orders is to make the harassment stop, and finding a wording that prevents an abuser from manipulating technology in the home of their victim sounds like a perfectly reasonable stipulation.
Yep, but those are different from the restraining order. With a restraining order, an abuser is criminally liable for entering a house without invitation or placing harassing calls even if the locks aren't changed or the telephone number remains the same.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday June 26 2018, @06:39PM (1 child)
But Joe Random Hacker in Canada or Mumbai might stumble on a password somehow, maybe gifted, maybe posted.
Restraining orders are utterly ineffective against clever people.
I listen to police radio as a hobby. These are the lowest possible police dispatches unless the violator happens to have a warrant outstanding already.
ROs are the trailer park security blanket.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @11:59PM
I disagree with that they are utterly ineffective. But, the reality is that the system is also abused by some (many?) 'drama queens' where the harassment is mostly in their own mind.
I know someone that is a bit 'cookoo' and over the years has had a restraining order taken out on at least half dozen of her longish term boyfriends after she broke up. Most of these guys were not the harassing/controlling type, and the narrative would always go like this: She'd call them after the break up to try to get back together or to tell them they could come over to her place to get whatever XYZ they'd left behind. So they'd come over and she'd yell and throw physical objects at them. They'd inevitably do something physical to avoid getting pummelled by household objects and in a ranting huff of retaliatory rage leave, probably hoping to never hear or see her again. A week later they'd be served with a 'restraining order'. Same story, every guy. Albeit, some of the guys were dickheads, but definitely not restraining order material.
It's just easier for the court to issue the restraining order, with the thinking that if the guy isn't coming back anyway then what harm is there in a 'spurious' restraining order. If the above happens often enough, I could imagine why the police think they are useless.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 26 2018, @03:02PM (1 child)
Look, I get you don't like legalese, but the fact is that a smart lawyer should in fact take precautions against this sort of thing.
Also, your model of how to deal with harassment noticeably puts the burden on the victim of the abuse rather than the perpetrator. That is unjust: The victim has already demonstrated to the courts that the perpetrator is the bad guy in this situation and has called upon the law to protect themselves. From a technical standpoint, it's entirely possible that the abuser has things installed in the house that their victim doesn't know about. That means the abuser may still get access even if their victim has done their best to stop them. At the very least, you'd need the system to have the abuser pay for the professional help many victims will need to remove the devices in question, because there are going to be a lot of victims out there with a lot less tech savvy than you or their abusers.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @10:48AM
I note that CheatersSpyShop is offline... they used to be promoted by the television show "Cheaters" to document cheating spouses. But its still quite easy to put bugs in smartphones, so that you can track phones, using the same methods moms use to track kids, alzheimer parents, or finding lost pets. Its amazing how small they are making GPS trackers these days.
You can drive someone nuts with the doorbell. The powers that be have about driven me nuts with the doorbell by putting that same sound in ads. I must end up with 95 percent of my trips to answer the door as fool's errands when I have the TV on. That alone was a good motivator to not have unknown content audio sounding off in the house. Most anything I run in the background now is prerecorded playlists, with no doorbells in it.
The use of technology, and especially when our own Congress is placing obstacles to discourage standardization and encourage proprietary techniques, is enabling those who take the time to research things an incredible advantage over those trusting souls who just wanted to use it. A hacked coffeepot or cooker can be used to foul up someone else's day cleaning up messes and arriving to inedibly burned or raw meals. A hacked refrigerator can be used to deliberately spoil their food. Hacking their HVAC can get them up in the middle of the night or have them arrive at the end of the workday to a house freezing cold or unbearably hot, and a utility bill to match. Just wait until you can flush their toilet all night long. Just for fun. And turn their water heater off so they get nice cold showers before going to work. Hack the burglar alarm so it sounds off when no one is there, but wakes all their neighbors anyway.
Yes, you can make someone else's life hell, from a thousand miles away.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday June 26 2018, @03:25PM (2 children)
So, Nancy the Luddite (or, Bill the Luddite, for that matter) has an ex abusing her. He's diddling with her stereo, her furnace, her washer/dryer, refrigerator - everything is connected, and at his mercy. Someone informs Nancy that her ex is doing all of this, and advises her to find an IT guy to change all the passwords. Sounds cool . . . except, the IT guy locks Nancy into her apartment, so that he can come by regularly to abuse her, himself.
If you won shit you don't understand, you ARE at the mercy of other people. That's something that will never change. Didn't the Bible tell us that the geek shall inherit the world? :^)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday June 26 2018, @06:41PM (1 child)
Hmmmm, is that a problem often encountered?
How bout hire an IT Gal. A whole new specialty attracting women to IT.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @08:52PM
There are no women in IT, you incel! All you incels chased them out! Technology is inherently misogynist! It's a conspiracy by all you incels to incel rape them! If you incels hadn't designed compiler to error out upon detection of a womb, women would take all your jobs and software wouldn't have any bugs or security issues, evar!!!
Death to incels! Police be upon them!