Tech Briefing Example

As I mentioned in class, each of you will propose up to 3 tech topics that you want to teach others how to do, and learn more about.  All technologies have consequences, even the best ones.  Some of you went to the talk by James Whittaker, the opening talk for Hack Arizona.  In that talk, he presented the idea that every 10 years there is a new disruptive technology.  I liked the talk, thought it was provoking, but not once did he mention any of the consequences society now faces as a result of these disruptions.  This is not a criticism of the talk; that was not his intent.  He was trying to charge up the men (mostly men) in the room to develop new projects in the up coming Hack challenges.  (By the way, there is a separate Hackathon for Women, too.)

Here is an example of what you can post on the blog prior to presenting your tech briefing:

I recently heard a podcast of how vulnerable the Internet of Things is because they are developed with little security, "What Happens when Hackers Hijack Our Smart Devices".   Given that they are vulnerable, it speaks to devices that do not have a lot of regulation (or security) in place.  For example,  police in Arkansas are trying to use Amazon's Echo data in a murder investigation. Based on court documents in November 2015, a man in Arkansas had some friends over at his house to watch a football game and in the morning, one of the friends was found dead in a hot tub in the backyard. Police later charged the man who lived in the house, James Bates, with murder. He has pleaded not guilty.

As the police were investigating the crime, they found a number of digital devices in the suspect's house, including an Amazon Echo device that was in the kitchen. They have since seized the device and have apparently gotten some information from it, but what they want to check is what — if anything — the device may have recorded around the time of the murder.

For this tech talk, I will focus on security and privacy concerns about what companies are doing to to secure their IoT devices (see podcast mentioned earlier) and, more importantly, what kind of data are companies collecting about what goes on inside the home.  What prevents these companies from giving up these data to law enforcement (including hackers or spies) any time they ask for (or take) it?