Privacy-Respecting Smart Home System Can Work Offline and Sends Fake Data

'A publicly-funded group of designers, artists and privacy experts
from Amsterdam have designed a smart home system prototype to "prove
it's technically possible to build a privacy respecting smart home
while maintaining convenience."

Its controller uses an Arduino Nano to disconnect the system from the
internet during times when it's not in use. They're building
everything on Mozilla's open smart home gateway software. The system's
microphone is a separate USB device that can be easily unplugged. For
extra security, the devices don't even use wifi to communicate.

"The Candle devices offer the advantages of a smart home system --
such as voice control, handy automations and useful insights --
without the downsides of sending your data to the cloud and feeling
watched in your own home," explains their blurb for Dutch Design Week,
where they're launching their prototypes of trust-worthy smart locks,
thermostats, and other Internet of Things devices:

Most smart devices promises us an easier life, but they increasingly
disappoint; they eavesdrop, share our data with countless third
parties, and offer attractive targets to hackers. Candle is different.
Your data never leaves your home, all devices work fine without an
internet connection, and everything is open source and transparent.

One of the group's members is long-time Slashdot reader mrwireless,
who shares an interesting observation:

Smart homes track everything that happens inside them. For developing
teenagers, this makes it more difficult to sneak in a date or break
the rules in other subtle ways, which is a normal, healthy part of
growing up. Candle is a prototype smart home that tries to mitigate
these issue. It has given its sensors the ability to generate fake
data for a while. In the future, children could get a monthly fake
data allowance.

Some of the devices have "skirts", simple fabric covers that can be
draped over the devices to hide their screen. If you own a dust
sensor, this can be useful if your mother in law comes over and you
haven't vacuumed in a while.'

-- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/10/20/216238

Cheers, Peter
-- 
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/
http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
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