As I dug into the Internet of Things (IoT) to understand the revolution of IoT, which is sweeping the world. I noticed that it had changed the way I see everything including policing. I questioned- Would 9/11 or a 26/11 or a Pulwama have happened in a connected world, where police have access to connected buildings, connected roads, connected vehicles, and data from sensors and devices of all sorts? Would we be able to detect bombs and suicide bombers even as they are being assembled in future? Would we be able to detect murders even when there are no eye-witnesses? As you read on, get prepared to get blown away by the amazing ways by which devices are solving crimes for the police.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is not just laptops or smartphones, but an avalanche of everyday objects - being connected to the Internet; and with each other. As technology infiltrates all aspects of our daily life, police are looking towards digital devices, the Internet of Things (IoT) to help fight and solve crimes.
The connected devices are becoming omnipresent, serving as non-stop eyes and ears, capturing our every move, listening in or watching us in the privacy of our homes. And police in future would be increasingly getting clues and solving cases through Internet of Things.
The business research company Gartner estimates 8.4 billion devices like fitness bands, smart watches, smart glasses, and smart camera got connected to the Internet in 2017, a 31 percent increase over the previous year. By 2020, the company prognosticates there will be roughly three smart devices for every person on the planet. Adding 50 billion new objects to the global information grid in two years means that each of these devices, will interact with the other 50 billion connected objects on earth. The result will be 2.5 sextillions potential networked object-to-object interactions-a network so vast and complex it would be difficult to understand or model.
We will be in future interfacing with several thousand things in a daily basis, each of which will gather harmless bits of data around the clock and upload the same to the cloud where it will get compiled, analysed, contrasted and reviewed. The Apple Watch or the app in your smartphone or your Fitbit will disclose your continued abstinence from physical exercise, and your refrigerator will reveal the number of beers you have been guzzling to your health insurance company. Your car will tell your Motor Vehicle insurance company of your reckless driving and frequent over-speeding and the garbage can will inform the local corporation of your frequent violations of recycling regulations. IoT will also let advertisers touch you with targeted advertisements from each of the connected devices.
All connected devices such as fans, washing machines, refrigerators will come with terms of conditions that will grant the makers of the devices access to all the data one is generating. Although one can in theory log out of the Cyber-space, in one's well connected smart home there will be no such an option, as a result all that happens in one's homes and the environment around them, will be open to observation to unwanted entities.
When sensors are all over the place, they will record even minor violations and will make the transgressors liable all the time. For instance, if a person were to be driving his car for a fraction of a time at 51 km per hour in a 50 km per hour zone, he would get automatically charged for over-speeding. When everything gets connected, we can hide nothing. The former CIA Director David Petraeus has stated that IoT will be transformational for undercover agents. In the old model, one might have planted a bug to eavesdrop into a conversation in the conference room. But today, it's possible to get the same information by intercepting the data streaming from the lighting app in the smartphone to the light bulb in the room. The devices we believe to be working for us could work for others.
On the upside, IoT devices are becoming increasingly prominent in criminal investigations and discovery. In November 2015, James Bates had called a friend over to his house in Arkansas to watch football, and both of them got drunk on vodka. After getting drunk, James Bates said his friend had accidentally drowned in his hot tub. When the police began investigations, they came across an Amazon's Echo device, which runs on the company's artificial intelligence software, Alexa. Police suspecting foul play in the death of Victor Collins requested Amazon to hand over any recordings or data from the night of the killing. Amazon refused, but Bates's lawyer filed a motion in April saying his client would volunteer the data, which Amazon then sent to prosecutors. Police after getting the data from Bate's Amazon Echo device had evidence to charge James Bates with murder.
A San Jose woman's Fitbit helped provide clues to police investigating her death. On September 13, 2018, when 67-year-old Karen Navarro was found dead, stabbed in the head and neck, in her San Jose home on Sept. 13 of 2018 it became clear to the police that the murderer had made up the scene to look like a suicide. Her stepfather, Anthony Aiello, informed the police he had visited Navarra on Sept. 8, with pizza and biscotti and stayed with her for about 15 minutes. Although Aiello reportedly denied killing Navarra, nearby cameras captured images of Aiello's car parked at Navarra's home when the Fitbit that the victim was wearing showed her heart rate suddenly spike, slow down and stop when Aiello was still around at her place the evidence was clear. San Jose Police arrested Aiello on charges of murder based on Fitbit evidence.
In July 2018, investigators in Iowa, with the aid of FBI experts, sieved data from Fitbit, of Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old student missing for about a month. Surveillance video led them to a 24-year-old man who the police could charge him with the murder. In September 2016, Ross Compton informed police that upon waking upon he found his Ohio home on fire and so jumped through a window to escape the flames. Compton's pacemaker suggested otherwise. Police charged him with aggravated arson and insurance fraud.
A short time before Christmas in December 2015, Richard Dabate claimed a so-called burglar beat him and shot his wife, Connie, in their home in Ellington, Connecticut, USA. But Connie was wearing a Fitbit. Police requested the device's data, which showed she had walked 1,217 feet after returning home from the exercise class, way more than the 125 feet it would take her to go from the car in the garage to the basement as per Richard's account. The Fitbit also registered Connie moving roughly an hour after Richard said someone killed her before 9:10 a.m. Facebook records also disproved Richard's story; it showed Connie had posted as late as 9:46 a.m. As his wife's Fitbit told another tale, Police had clear evidence to charge Dabate with the murder.
Police found Nicole VanderHeyden, 31, strangled and beaten to death in May 2016 in Wisconsin, USA. Initially, her boyfriend Detrie was being suspected, so police took him into custody for the murder. It later turned out that Detrie on the day of the murder was wearing a Fitbit Flex. Police later released Detrie and exonerated him when Fitbit data revealed to them that Detrie was asleep around the time when the murder was being committed. The detectives later stumbled upon evidence to prove that a man named George Burch who was just released months before from the jail had committed the murder. His complicity in the crime was established by tracking his locations through his cell phone and Google Dashboard. The wireless network signals and the GPS confirmed that Burch had allegedly killed VanderHeyden and dumped her body in a farm field.
All the cases listed above, in the days to come, will have one thing in common: all of them would probably become etched in criminal history as few first perpetrators busted by the internet of things. Many more such cases are sure to follow, because the connected devices we use for convenience, entertainment and health can also contradict our pretences and expose our lies. Smart cars, fridges, doorbells, watches, phones, Fitbit, sneakers, televisions, gaming consoles, coffee makers, pacemakers, all can monitor, record, and provide evidence.
In the future, on the downside, hackers may target personal devices to introduce malware into enterprise networks. Workplaces will become more difficult to secure when the connected devices like Fitbit and smartwatches enter offices on the wrists and pockets of employees. Such devices that appear harmless would connect to the office networks and create more entry points or vulnerabilities for criminals to compromise the office networks. Cybercriminals know this, but the employees don't realise this.
Most of the devices connected to the Internet are lame-brained having no capacity for upgrades. They don't possess mechanisms not only for updating
themselves but also for fixing security issues that surface. Considering our present inability to secure the existing network, how are we going to protect
several thousand connected devices from pets to pacemakers to autonomous cars which are being connected and are hackable whensoever on the planet?
The Internet of Things will become a plethora of opportunities for those wanting to exploit the vulnerabilities with nefariousness. It will throw open security
vulnerabilities on an unprecedented scale, which could be unusual and horrifying.
The Internet of Things will explode in the coming age; Soon all our things will get connected to the Internet. We cannot stop this. We may therefore have to find ways of staying in touch with our deepest essence by moderating its influence without being overwhelmed by it. To overcome the spiritual challenge, we may have to take breaks, to disconnect and reconnect with our inner, undigitised self.
