Tech has always been lax about security, while the average consumer has been socialized more or less to a plug and play environment. Plug in the (non-IoT) iron, plug in the (non-IoT) fridge – they work. If there’s a problem, and the warranty is still in effect, the manufacturer or retailer steps in. The problem is generally resolved.

Just his week, a indignant father reported that the voice from our Nest camera threatened to steal our baby. Worse, he Googled ‘Nest + camera + hacked’ and found out that this happens frequently. As the Mercury News reported, “Nest, which was designed to keep intruders out of people’s homes, effectively allowed hackers to get in.”

Tech takes no responsibility for this, despite the fact that they not only hold sensitive user data from which they profit enormously: connected devices are out in the wild, sans necessary safeguards, besides suggesting two-step authentication. Seriously?

Most consumers are not sophisticated tech users. To them, Google is synonymous with ‘search’ and it doesn’t hurt that ‘Google’ has become a verb. You can’t ask for better marketing. No one DuckDuckGo’s or StartPage’s.

Clear, strongly worded warning labels on IoT devices would be a start by way of consumer protection. In bold print, please, both on the boxes and in the instruction manuals.

As Ars Technica reported, “Amazon- and Google-approved apps turned both voice-controlled devices into “smart spies.” Whitehat hackers at Germany’s Security Research Labs developed eight apps—four Alexa “skills” and four Google Home “actions”—that all passed Amazon or Google security-vetting processes. The skills or actions posed as simple apps for checking horoscopes, with the exception of one, which masqueraded as a random-number generator. Behind the scenes, these “smart spies,” as the researchers call them, surreptitiously eavesdropped on users and phished for their passwords.”

Even more worrisome, Surveillance Capitalism is spreading. Google Is Coming for Your Face, said The Nation. “The New York Daily News reported on Wednesday that Google has been using temporary employees, paid through a third party, to collect facial scans of dark-skinned people in an attempt to better balance its facial recognition database…Temporary workers were told “to go after people of color, conceal the fact that people’s faces were being recorded and even lie to maximize their data collections.” Target populations included homeless people and students..but, critically, were never informed about how the facial scans would be used, stored, or, apparently, collected.

A Google spokesperson told the Daily News that the data was being collected “to build fairness into Pixel 4’s face unlock feature” in the interests of “building an inclusive product.””

Like the roach motel of yore, you can be ‘opted in,’ but you can’t the opt-out. And if it was in the name of inclusion, why lie?

You know those little suggestions Gmail offers when you’re responding to an email? They’re studying your speech patterns. In the name of convenience, of course.

Not only are they learning your speech patterns, but with Deep Fakes becoming more ubiquitous and tech learning our every habit, they’re becoming harder to spot and with no accountability in terms of hackers or the creators of the tech itself, it’s getting increasingly dangerous. And lest we forget, it was over a year before Yahoo revealed the full extent of the hack it had experienced (Every single Yahoo account was hacked – 3 billion in all) – three times the number that the company had initially reported, including names, email addresses and passwords. Where was the accountability?  If there is none, why bother with public safety?

Speaking of Deep Fakes, if they’re such a large, growing and potentially dangerous problem that a tech consortium, including Facebook and Microsoft, is pledging $10M to combat them, why is facial recognition the mission du jour?

Meanwhile, The Guardian reported that Amazon warehouse employee “Billy Foister died last month after a heart attack at work. The incident was just one in a series of recent accidents and fatalities.” Worse, he “had lain on the floor for 20 minutes before receiving treatment from Amazon’s internal safety responders.” How is that possible when, as the article noted, “A couple of days before, he put the wrong product in the wrong bin and within two minutes management saw it on camera and came down to talk to him about it.”

In terms of his death, again, Amazon takes no responsibility: officially, Foister was pronounced dead off premises. Which may be why Amazon waited so long before summoning help.

It’s way past time that these companies are held accountable. Again, the tech cartel seems to have it both ways – thorough when it comes to inhaling our personal data, but no mea culpa when it comes to the consequences of their often-lax security. And given their current unchecked invasion into our privacy as never before – with our images and voices being manipulated thanks to Deep Fakes, the opacity of the algorithms and the rampant and growing censorship practiced by the tech cartel – important to note that none of these things are happening in a vacuum. Attention must seriously be paid.

It’s often noted that Google long ago abandoned its motto, ‘don’t be evil.’ Equally important to take heed of the motto of the Amazon-owned Washington Post, in case you believe that there’s nothing to see here: democracy dies in darkness. Onward and forward.