The Surveillance Is Coming From Inside The (Smart) House
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 September 2019
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Host Shannon Palus talks to Roxanne Leitao, a UK-based designer researching ways to make the smart home gear safer for victims of domestic abuse. They’ll discuss the ways that smart thermostats can be used to gaslight victims, the security measures that can help everyone in a home have agency, and the reason why smart home tech that’s hard to understand is all the more dangerous. They also touch on her other research in designing gig economy platforms that reduce the potential for bias against workers. Podcast production by Justin D. Wright.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to IfBet, the show about how technology is changing our lives and our future. |
| 0:05.6 | I'm Shannon Paulus. |
| 0:12.2 | Hey, everyone, welcome to IfBet. |
| 0:14.6 | We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tense, a partnership between Slate, Arizona State University, and New America. |
| 0:20.7 | We are recording this on the afternoon State University, and New America. |
| 0:24.8 | We are recording this on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 24th. |
| 0:29.5 | On today's show, we'll be talking to Roxanne Ledo, a design researcher at the University of the Arts, London, who studies surveillance and abuse with smart home devices and intimate |
| 0:34.2 | relationships. |
| 0:35.4 | After the interview, my colleague Aaron Mack will join me for |
| 0:38.3 | Don't Close My Taps, where we talk about the best things we saw on the web this week. That's all coming |
| 0:43.6 | up on If Then. |
| 0:49.9 | Do you have any smart technology in your home? Like millions of people, I do. An Alexa, as well as light bulbs, and an air conditioner that can be controlled from an app on my phone, even when no one is home. |
| 1:02.9 | This kind of technology makes it wonderfully easy to control my environment without leaving bed, or keep things hospitable for my dog when I'm at work. It's becoming |
| 1:12.3 | commonplace to worry about how tech might be used by companies for nefarious purposes, |
| 1:17.3 | say, listening in on your conversation about shoes to advertise a pair of sneakers to you. But for |
| 1:23.2 | folks who find themselves the subject of intimate partner violence, they also offer a way for |
| 1:28.3 | abusers to control them, track them, and even make them doubt their own sanity. Smart home technology |
| 1:34.9 | can be confusing. Even if you're savvy about how your smart plugs function, it can be hard to |
| 1:39.8 | convince someone else that your gear isn't just malfunctioning, but really is being turned against you. |
| 1:45.4 | Roxanne Lato is a design researcher at the University of Arts London, who's exploring ways to make |
| 1:51.1 | this tech safer. We'll also chat about some of our other work on how to control for biases |
| 1:56.6 | and user interfaces on gig economy platforms, like the information that's displayed about your host |
... |
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