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The growing popularity of smart home technology has given rise to something dangerous: Internet connected abuse.
A new report from The New York Times reveals a disturbing trend in which smart home technology is being used as a tool for domestic violence. While it is not a revelation that connected devices can be exploited by bad actors, the inflamed use of this technology as a vehicle for psychological warfare and surveillance in abusive relationships is deeply troubling.
According to the Times report released Saturday, domestic abusers use internet-connected thermostats, doorbells, speakers, lights and other smart devices to establish their power or harass their partners. One woman claimed that her air conditioning was extinguished without her controlling it, another woman alleged that her door lock code was frequently changed, and another woman claimed that her the doorbell rang repeatedly when no one was there. A woman told the Times that she had decided to rip off her smart thermostat from the wall.
People working with the lines of help for the victims of abuse told the Times that they have seen an increase in calls over the last year regarding people who did not have any control over their smart homes. "The callers said that the attackers were monitoring and remotely controlling them through smart home appliances and the smart home system," said Muneerah Budhwani, a spokesperson for the national line of domestic violence, at The Times.
"People have started to raise their hands on training and ask what needs to be done about it," said Erica Olsen, director of the National Network's safety net project to end domestic violence. , at the Times. She would have qualified the abuse of intelligent home automation technology to "prevail".
Recent years have seen a rapid rise in connected homes in the United States, from 17 million in 2015 to 29 million last year, according to a McKinsey report. Smart homes are expected to reach $ 27 billion by 2021.
Technology has, of course, perpetuated surveillance and abuse for years. NPR investigated more than 70 domestic violence shelters in the United States in 2014 and found that 85% of them reported working with victims followed by GPS and 75% reported victims whose abusers were spying on them. with the help of mobile apps. A 2015 study by the Victoria Family Violence Resource Center found that 98% of respondents "reported having had clients who had been harassed and abused by technology".
What is unique and particularly troubling about the issues explored in the Times report is how the proliferation of emerging technologies and product design can directly contribute to violence against women. It has become incredibly cheap and easy to turn a home into a smartphone-controlled surveillance machine, and for many of these connected devices, attackers simply need to access an app to exercise control over their victims . What is clear is that the male-dominated industry would not have been able to predict how their creations could be exploited by domestic abusers. This is a common and dangerous consequence of the Silicon Valley philosophy: "Move fast and break things," which often does not neglect how its creations will impact the most vulnerable populations.
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