How your smart home devices can be turned against you

“No IoT deve­lo­per in Sili­con Valley builds the system thin­king about the misuse of those tech­no­lo­gies, ” says Leonie Tanc­zer, lectu­rer and lead inves­ti­ga­tor of the Gender and IoT project at Univer­sity College London, which has been looking at ways smart devi­ces in our homes can be turned into tools of domes­tic abuse. “They built them on the premise of a conven­ti­o­nal family [and] just assume that anyone who coha­bits a space is happy with [their] data being collec­ted.”

But that’s not always the case. In 2018, one of the first known court cases for IoT-rela­ted abuse led to an 11-month prison sentence. Ross Cairns was found guilty of eaves­drop­ping on his estran­ged wife through the microp­hone on a wall-moun­ted tablet used to control the heating and lights in their home. Hearing her say that she no longer loved him, he arri­ved at the doors­tep of the home they once shared to confront her. “Oh, you don’t love me anymore?” he repor­tedly said.

The situ­a­tion quickly esca­la­ted. Cairns pushed his wife in front of their two chil­dren, spat on the winds­creen of her car, and insul­ted her.

This case is an unfor­tu­nate snaps­hot of many cases of domes­tic abuse. Although histo­ri­cally defi­ned by physi­cal acts of violence, our unders­tan­ding of domes­tic abuse is rapidly chan­ging.

“The outda­ted percep­tion about violent crime, ranging from common assault through to more seri­ous offen­ces, does not unders­tand the true nature of domes­tic abuse, ” said Robert Buck­land, the UK’s secre­tary of state for justice, while discus­sing the country’s recent domes­tic abuse bill at the House of Commons. “It igno­res the insi­di­ous, contro­lling or coer­cive beha­vi­our, and the psycho­lo­gi­cal abuse that, bit by bit, chan­ges what may start as a loving and equal rela­ti­ons­hip into one that is comple­tely unequal and contro­lling, where, without the victim reali­sing it, they are turned into some­body who is being abused.”

Tech abuse doesn’t start and end with loca­tion trac­king. When smart home tech­no­logy in a dwelling is contro­lled by just one person, it can strip control from the others living there. Survei­llance can easily deve­lop into active stal­king, and what was once invi­si­ble beco­mes a tangi­ble feeling of threat or a physi­cal confron­ta­tion. Too often, heated moments can esca­late into violence.

While domes­tic abuse can affect anyone, it dispro­por­ti­o­na­tely affects women. Around the world, roughly a third of women have expe­ri­en­ced some form of physi­cal or sexual abuse from their inti­mate part­ner. Such acts leave a wake of depres­sion, abor­tion, lower birth weights in chil­dren, and a higher risk of HIV. In some cases, abuse can esca­late to murder. Around 38% of all women who are murde­red globally are killed at the hands of their current or former part­ner.

“Domes­tic violence is ende­mic, ” says Louise Howard, profes­sor of peri­na­tal psychi­atry at King’s College London. “It’s far, far more common than people realise”.

Like a virus, domes­tic abuse also spre­ads through close contact. A study from Leba­non publis­hed in 2017, for exam­ple, found that chil­dren who witnes­sed violence in their house­hold were three-times more likely to become perpe­tra­tors of inti­mate part­ner violence as adults.

Keeping laws in line with emer­ging tech­no­logy is challen­ging, but in many cases the people buying the tech­no­logy still have to figure out what is and isn’t accep­ta­ble beha­vi­our. “The tech­no­logy is chan­ging, soci­ety is trying to catch up and adapt, ” says Jason Nurse, a compu­ter scien­tist at the Univer­sity of Kent in England, who studies inside and outside thre­ats to cyber­se­cu­rity. “If some­one was in a room reading a book most people wouldn’t walk in and just turn off the lights and leave. Because, why would you do that? But in IoT inci­den­ces, if you can turn off some­o­ne’s smart light from a remote loca­tion, hey, that’s having a laugh.”

Over time, howe­ver, simi­larly unusual happe­nings might make you ques­tion the equa­lity of your rela­ti­ons­hip. “It often takes the accu­mu­la­tion of minor things until you realise, actu­ally, I’m in an unhe­althy rela­ti­ons­hip that’s not normal, ” Tanc­zer says. If one person in the house­hold is the account admi­nis­tra­tor of every­day items like the heating system, kettle and washing machine, they can each be used as tools of coer­cion and control. If these devi­ces stop func­ti­o­ning properly, only one person can put things straight again – a clas­sic method of enfor­cing depen­dence.

Consu­mers need to be more aware of what they are brin­ging into their homes when they buy devi­ces that work as part of the Inter­net of Things, argues Irina Brass, a lectu­rer in regu­la­tion, inno­va­tion, and public policy at Univer­sity College London, who studies emer­ging tech­no­lo­gies. “I think aware­ness is funda­men­tally lacking at the moment, ” she says. “Befo­re­hand, you would have one parti­cu­lar device or, say, maxi­mum, two devi­ces: your compu­ter and your phone that would be connec­ted to the inter­net. But now, incre­a­singly, you have a number of devi­ces in your home envi­ron­ment… the connec­ti­vity aspect of it is quite invi­si­ble [and] consu­mers are not aware of what this connec­ti­vity brings.”

Currently, smart devi­ces are actu­ally still rela­ti­vely dumb. Their core feature is their wire­less capa­bi­lity and connec­tion to other devi­ces in the home. The “smart” label is a misno­mer. But that is likely to change. As IoT systems make grea­ter use of arti­fi­cial inte­lli­gence and become more auto­ma­ted, we all need to teach oursel­ves about just how they can be used and misu­sed.