Is That Mobile Phone You Paid For Really Yours? Bestselling Author Says, Nope!
While at a local coffeehouse, days after my move to Las Vegas, a loud shrieking sound began emanating from my mobile phone. Glancing at my screen, I immediately recognized it as an Amber Alert, the child abduction alert system here in the U.S. At that point a sobering thought entered my mind:
That irrespective of one’s location, the phone knows exactly where I am at all times, a surveillance system that has been baked into every phone.
Joshua A.T. Fairfield, author of the book Owned: Property, Privacy and the New Digital Serfdom (Cambridge University Press, June of 2017) contends in fact that mobile phones, iPads and other digital devices are not really ours when we purchase them, a major affront to our privacy rights. Yes, you heard correctly — — those software enable devices are owned by the software and content companies that manufactured them. In Farfield’s vernacular, we’ve all been OWNED.
These de facto owners even have the audacity to sue customers like you and me when we use their property in way that violate the fine print of those cryptic user agreements we opt into. This says Fairfield runs contrary to hundreds of years of property and privacy laws. Sellers have somehow hoodwinked regulators, lawmakers and courts to given them special dispensation under business favorable copyright laws. And by opting in, we give them permission to track us, do what they damn well please with our personal and private data.
Their mantra: “You can only do what we given you permission to do with the device that’s in your permission. We’ll make you think you own it, but we really do.”
By way of example, Apple recently re-released a notification warning iPhone users not to “install any software that hacks iOS.”
This practice known as “jailbreaking” is where someone utilizes unauthorized software hacks to run code that allows the phone to do things that the Apple folks expressly forbid, like icons changes, adding themes, or using unapproved apps.
The sad reality is in a few years, we’ll be OWNED by our smart television, appliances and other everyday home items that are listening to us in our homes. If you are like me you are probably already seeing evidence of this (just recently, an table I was discussing with my girlfriend mysteriously appeared on my Instagram feed. What’s crazy about this is that all of our devices were in “off mode” when we were having this discussion.”
In his exquisitely researched book which shows that we are owned by not only software providers but advertising companies and overreaching governments, Fairfield issues a clarion call encouraging device user to take back their ownership rights.
Earlier, this year Fairfield responded to a number of questions I had for him, via email. Here is what he had to share:
What was the main impetus behind your decision to write this book?
I wrote the book for two reasons. First, I believe that private property has some value even in the sharing economy. Property enables us to be independent, to build wealth, and to control our environment — to build a home.
But in the case of, let’s say, Apple, aren’t property rights being misused?
Yes, that’s in fact what’s happening under current law. Intellectual property holders hold huge swaths of digital property, and the rest of us are peasants, not able to use the smartphones, autonomous cars, or even the tractors that we purchase. IP holders tell us we merely license such things, and therefore cannot control our own possessions, sell them, modify them, or even repair them.
Is there a second reason you wrote the book?
The second reason is related. The Internet of Things is hijacking our data and handing it off to advertisers, without our knowledge or any meaningful consent. Smart televisions spy on our living rooms and bedrooms. Our smartphones eagerly report our browsing and buying habits to those who do not have our best economic interests at heart.
So what’s actually happening here?
Privacy is dying, and one of the reasons is that we do not control our own property. Just as we get privacy in the real world by locking doors, planting hedges, and drawing the curtains, we need the ability to lock invasive advertisers out of our smart devices, plant encrypted hedges around our data, and draw the digital curtains to keep peeping app designers out of our personal data.
And if this issue is not addressed?
If the intellectual property holders control the devices we keep closest to us, those eyes and ears will spy on our most personal and vulnerable moments. If we control the devices, we can kick the spies out of our smart devices, and lock the doors behind them.
Can you elaborate on this a bit?
Sure. What we’re essentially talking about here are two sides to the same coin. Intellectual property laws have gone too far, and traditional property ownership has been left undeveloped. A great example of the first side of the coin is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 1201, which was supposed to stop hackers from breaking digital locks to make illegal copies of intellectual property. So, for example, it is illegal to break the copy protection on a DVD to copy that DVD. But that never worked: hackers didn’t pay attention to these rules before, and they didn’t after. The tide of illegal copies did not stop. But companies learned to use those same digital locks to lock owners out of their own property.
And the average, everyday user?
Now, otherwise law-abiding farmers have to hack their own software-enhanced tractors to conduct basic repairs. There was nothing illegal about repairing your tractor before. But now that the tractor diagnostics are locked behind digital locks, and breaking those locks is illegal, farmers are converted into hackers.
What did all of this go wrong?
In short, traditional property got left behind in the internet revolution. That is because judges assumed that traditional property law — the way we all own our cars and houses — didn’t have a place online because the online ecosystem is intangible, and property is all about stuff you can touch. Those judges were wrong. We’ve always had intangible property: your bank account is a good example.
Speaking of banks, how does money fit into this conversation?
Many would be surprised to hear that money isn’t their property merely because it is an entry in a bank’s database. In fact, even what we think about as the most traditional property ownership, the deed to a house, isn’t really tangible, it’s an entry in the Courthouse database, in those dusty books of deeds. So in fact there was never any problem with letting people own intangible assets just like they own their house or car. It was a failure of the judicial imagination, and one my book tries to help correct.
Why should the everyday person be concerned about this issue you talk about in your book?
Imagine that, as you are going to bed for the night, you notice a drone watching you through the window. Imagine then that this drone follows you everywhere you go throughout the day: to the doctor, to the therapist, to political rallies, to religious services, and to the bar, month, after month, after month. And the drone tracks you online as well. Imagine the drone recorded every web search you made, recorded every keystroke you entered, where you were browsing, what you were interested in. Once the drone finds out who you know, your spouse, your children, it sends drones to track them too and tie all of your data together.
Your point is?
Advertising companies don’t follow us with drones because they don’t need to. We carry these spy drones with us, and call them smartphones. Advertisers do not gather all of this data for our benefit. They do it for theirs. Quite simply, they want to know what we want, how much we want it, and how much we can afford to pay. Entering an economic transaction with an advertiser who does this is like playing poker with someone who can see your cards. You can’t win.
What is the government’s role in this?
Actually, because of a loophole in the United States Constitution, all of this data — on where we go, who we talk to, what we like, what we read, what we watch, what we search for, on our physical and mental health — goes to the government without a warrant supported by probable cause. The government can simply ask for it, and get it: years worth of our location data, web searches, and more. Regardless of political party or persuasion, we should all be concerned that our lives are an open book when government comes knocking on Google’s or Facebook’s or Verizon’s door.
So how can we has everyday people respond?
How can we respond? First, by using adblockers wherever possible. This does not protect our privacy, but it does stop the flow of cash for spying.
Second, we can protect our data at rest by encrypting our devices, and in transit by encrypting data as it leaves the device. Firefox plugins like the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s HTTPS Everywhere are a great, simple start. A virtual private network (VPN) is an even better way to protect data leaving our devices.
Third, we can uninstall apps that are too nosy. If a flashlight app wants your contact list and location data, it needs to go.
Finally, we can support efforts to change the law. Legislative right-to-repair bills are gaining momentum in many states. That is a good start. Right-to-hack laws, like the federal law that permits owners to hack their phones to get them to work on a different carrier, are already in place, but need to be extended to many more powers over many more kinds of devices.
Finally, what is your greatest hope in terms of the message you’ve articulated in OWNED?
Right now, we are a nation sorely divided. But one idea that still crosses all political lines is the idea that people should be able to control what they own. There is frustration with spying advertisers and government snoops across the political spectrum. The idea of private property is still strong in American culture. Americans are not ready to be digital peasants.
My greatest hope, therefore, is that consumers will be able to seize the eyes and ears of the Internet of Things, that people will delete spying applications, and buy devices from responsible companies that put power in the buyer’s hands.
I am also hopeful that we’ll see even more bipartisan support for Right-to-Repair bills, and the introduction of strong privacy protections for the owners of smart devices. I hope that regulatory agencies will begin to listen to consumers, and hold companies accountable for their deception and spying. I hope that we will be able to see past the flash and noise of politics to realize that we have a limited window of time to make sure that in years to come, we will be owners, and not owned.