Internet-connected “smarts” are creeping into cars, refrigerators, thermostats, toys and just about everything else in your home.

Source: Home items are getting smarter and creepier, like it or not

NEW YORK (AP) — One day, finding an oven that just cooks food may be as tough as buying a TV that merely lets you change channels.

Internet-connected “smarts” are creeping into cars, refrigerators, thermostats, toys and just about everything else in your home. CES 2019, the gadget show opening Tuesday in Las Vegas, will showcase many of these products, including an oven that coordinates your recipes and a toilet that flushes with a voice command.

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Will you have to have an ID to sit in an autonomous vehicle?

Digital driver’s licenses are coming to the United States, harnessing biometrics like facial recognition, fingerprints, and iris scanning for security. Iowa in 2019 plans to begin doling out the licenses state-wide, and Delaware, Virginia, Wyoming, and several other states have conducted small pilot studies of the technology.Photo: IdemiaRob Mikell

Source: Driver’s Licenses Go Digital – IEEE Spectrum

Men In Grey (2009-2014).

“We are the lightning in an age of cloud computing.

“The Men In Grey (2009-2014) was a conspiracy, applied research framework and street intervention series that sought to engender greater techno-political subjectivity among computer users as to the growing risk of mass surveillance on computer networks.

Source: Men In Grey

For now, federal law and Supreme Court precedent dictates that law enforcement has the authority to legally monitor anyone in public. The basic idea is that none of us have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” when we are in public. So just as the police can capture us with video cameras and license plate readers, so, too, could they contract with AV automakers to simply get at vast quantities of future AV data. And if the companies don’t want to play ball, such data can be accessed with a mere court order (known as a “d-order”) under the Stored Communications Act of 1986.

Source: Why cops won’t need a warrant to pull the data off your autonomous car | Ars Technica

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has officially gained agency-wide access to a nationwide license plate recognition database, according to a contract finalized earlier this month. The system gives the agency access to billions of license plate records and new powers of real-time location tracking, raising significant concerns from civil libertarians.

Source: ICE has struck a deal to track license plates across the US – The Verge