Thread by @ireneista

The immediate implication of the Amazon mesh networking thing is that some people won't know where their bandwidth is going. This is concerning in its own right...

... but to us, the larger implication is that once it's deployed, it will no longer be possible to prevent a device from reaching the internet just by not connecting it to the internet.

To make this concrete, we'll give an example.

If you don't want your Roomba to publicize a map of your home, today, you can be sure it won't by never setting up the app or the wifi. (Not that you should have to go to that length!) nytimes.com/2017/07/25/tec…

In the future, manufacturers of devices that want to exfiltrate data might be able to partner with Amazon to get it out via mesh networking.

This is pure speculation on our part, to be clear.

Unfortunately, we've been around and seen enough in the privacy world to know that the right time to oppose something like this is right at the start, when the enabling technologies are being put in place, *before* there are people actively profiting from the thing.

That means, necessarily, that there has to be some speculation. It's important to go broad with the speculation, and identify all the problematic use-cases. Any individual prediction like this is a wild guess and shouldn't be taken too seriously.

Most people have trouble seeing a problem without an example, so we came up with one, but really the work that needs to be done is to make a long list of harmful possibilities and identify protections that could be put in place to address as many as possible.

just making sure this side thread stays linked up.

please be gentle to the person who raised the question it's responding to. it's a fair question.

https://twitter.com/ireneista/status/1399486854945198084