This week I got an angry email from a friend who had just rented a car from Hertz: “Did you know Hertz is putting cameras in rental cars!? This is bullsh*t. I wonder if it says they can tape me in my Hertz contract.” He sent along this photo of a camera peeping at him from out of his “NeverLost,” a navigational device that the company has started putting in many of its cars:

“I even felt weird about singing in the car by myself,” he said. A Googling expedition revealed that my friend was not the first person driven to disturbance by the in-car surveillance system. A Yelp user was revved up about it. Disgruntled renters on travel forums like MilePoint and FlyerTalk want Hertz to put the brakes on “spy cams.” A loyal Hertz customer who rented a car in Chicago said it might make them never want to rent with Hertz again:

The system can’t be turned off from what I could tell. Further investigation revealed that the camera can see the entire inside of the car. I know rental car companies have been tracking the speed and movements of their vehicles for years but putting a camera inside the cabin of the vehicle is taking their need for information a little TOO FAR. I find this to be completely UNACCEPTABLE. In fact, if I get another car from Hertz with a camera in it, I will move our business from Hertz completely.

http://fusion.net/story/61741/hertz-cameras-in-rental-cars/

Hacked dog, a car that snoops on you and a fridge full of adverts: the perils of the internet of things

In the not so distant future, every object in your life will be online and talking to one another. It’ll transform the way we live and work - but will the benefits outweigh the dangers?

If we think of today’s internet metaphorically as about the size of a golf ball, tomorrow’s will be the size of the sun. Within the coming years, not only will every computer, phone and tablet be online, but so too will every car, house, dog, bridge, tunnel, cup, clock, watch, pacemaker, cow, streetlight, bridge, tunnel, pipeline, toy and soda can. Though in 2013 there were only 13bn online devices, Cisco Systems has estimated that by 2020 there will be 50bn things connected to the internet, with room for exponential growth thereafter. As all of these devices come online and begin sharing data, they will bring with them massive improvements in logistics, employee efficiency, energy consumption, customer service and personal productivity.

This is the promise of the internet of things (IoT), a rapidly emerging new paradigm of computing that, when it takes off, may very well change the world we live in forever.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/11/internet-of-things-hacked-online-perils-future#comments

CCTV cameras should be installed by homeowners and businesses to help detectives solve crimes in the age of austerity, Britain’s most senior policeman has said.

Commissioner Bernard Hogan Howe also said that homeowners must make efforts to install equipment properly to avoid undermining inquiries.

...

He said: “Over the last year as facial recognition software has got better we can apply the software to the images of burglaries or robberies and we can compare those images with the images we take when we arrest people.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11458153/Police-chief-Put-CCTV-in-every-home.html