Smart house technology is not as futuristic as we think

By Brent Daggett: In 1999, Disney released the film “Smart House,” which was roughly based on Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt.”
Smart House was about 13-year-old Ben, who won a competition for a computerized home run by a cyborg named PAT, played by Katey Sagal.
Throughout the film, Pats behavior drastically changes and eventually traps the family inside since she believes the outside world is too dangerous.
Toward the end, Sagal appears as a holographic image and Ben says something to the effect that she is not real and never will be human.
After that, PAT unlocks the house.

While the concept of smart houses might have seemed futuristic 13 years ago, the technology is now coming to fruition.
A smart house (also known as Intelligent Home, Home Hontrol or Building Control), is basically a computer system that can monitor a wide range of daily living and home control tasks.
The number one ranked company for the installation is KNX.
KNX advertises these conveniences:

“Locally: Suitable for use when leaving the room for any length of time or simply when going to bed, with one touch you can ensure lights are illuminated, blinds are closed, heating is reduced to standby/night mode and the TV / Sound system is switched off.
Globally: Yet again, one touch control. Except this time, with a predefined exit button, you can effectively shut-down your home as you leave head to work, go shopping or leave for any other reason.”

Also, it is important to note that users of KNX smart home technology can access controls on smart phone apps if they have Apple or Android devices.
Instead of inundating you with a profusion of technological jargon, a great way to research KNX is to watch “What is a smart house? Video example of Smart Home Technology in Action” above:

Other companies dabbling in the areas of smart house technology include Microsoft, Z-Wave (“a next-generation wireless ecosystem that lets all your home electronics talk to each other, and to you, via remote control”), and Zigbee Alliance.
While the smart house technology is alarming in of itself, what if smart house technology went one step further and RFID chips were used?
Well, it should not surprise anyone if it happens one day.
The book, “Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Purchase and Watch Your Every Move,” written by Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre points out this very concept.
Phillips Electronic patent, No. 6,758,397 (Machine Readable Label Reader System for Articles with Changeable Status) granted on July 6, 2004 has the ability to read anything that is RFID tagged.

“The smart appliances are all network-enable, meaning they each have a microprocessor and at least an input or output device to communicate… For example, the table saw… maybe equipped with a fixed reader.. [that] receives data from [an RFID tag] and transmits this data, along with an identification of a user…
[Suppose] the user was eating cereal as a snack while working in his/her tool shop… a cereal manufacturer would probably have information about cereal (or other products that could be cross-sold) that is particularly relevant to users who like to eat cereal as a snack… suppliers of content to readers can exploit the “hidden” information in requests for information for direct marketing.”

If you are already shaking from reading that, I will take it one step further.
Armstrong, which is a maker of floors, ceilings and cabinetry, is selling tiles that can come pre-embedded with hidden antennas.
Currently, the antennas are mostly used for Internet accesses, but Albrecht and McIntyre speculate that it could be used for the worse.
This is how it works:

“As the customer enters the door to his residence, a sniffer placed on the floor near the doorway detects the new [RFID-tagged] purchase.  In a preferred embodiment, this wireless sniffer automatically and continuously emits an interrogation signal that searches for an RFID label which it has never seen before.  The user’s house may contain many sniffer’s which all communicate wirelessly with a personal computer.  A [mobile] sniffer could even be installed in the user’s car.. [T]his mobile sniffer would be able to report new purchases as the care enters the driveway or garage.”

These may be far-fetched ideas, but you really must the report, “Security Framework for RFID-based Applications Smart Home Environment,” by Divyan M. Koidala, Daeyoung Kim, Chan Yeob Yeun and Byoungcheon Lee, which appeared in the Journal of Information Processing Systems, Vol.7, No.1, March 2011.
If the trend continues, our privacy will be lost, the fourth amendment will be eroded (which is practically gone anyway), and major corporation will have an even greater ability to control us.
I believe the message by Albrecht and McIntyre is correct:

“Once the mega-businesses feel the economic impact of privacy invasion, they’ll stop forcing their suppliers to adopt the technology.  And, of course, once businesses find spychipping an unprofitable venture, the politicians who are supporting their agenda will fall in line.  If we join together to take a stand against RFID, we can prevent spychips from invading our stores, homes, and bodies.  Together we can change the direction of business, and, in so doing, we can change the course of history.”

Edited by Madison Ruppert

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