Technocreep (24 page)

Never wanting to miss a revenue opportunity, Walt Disney World® offers a $79 “Keys to the Kingdom” behind-the-scenes tour that includes a visit to these tunnels, or Utilidors.

Like DARPA, the Disney Corporation has a significant research enterprise. Its motto is “The Science Behind the Magic” and they live up to it, often working in partnership with leading universities.

Disney Research has produced a Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing technology called Touché, which combines the touch screen capabilities of a tablet with the motion sensing abilities of a device like Microsoft's Kinect. According to the Disney Research website, it “can not only detect a touch event, but simultaneously recognize complex configurations of the human hands and body during touch interaction.”
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It can detect, for example, a hand submerged in water and subtle gestures. Touché can enable smart doorknobs and replace computer devices like a mouse and keyboard with simple gestures like a finger pinch. It will undoubtedly find its way into a Disney theme park.

Another wonder from Disney Labs is “Inshin-Den-Shin” which translates as “unspoken mutual understanding.” A user records a message, and can then replay it by touching the ear of a friend or classmate.
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The stated goal of Disney Research is to make the technology invisible, because as noted by Mark Weiser, “the most profound technologies are those that disappear.”
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There is a lot to be learned from Disney's bold, profitable foray into tagging people like farmers tag their cows. The first is how a technology can become “
de facto
mandatory.” Sure, it's possible to live in Los Angeles without a car or in Beijing without a mobile phone: it's just not much fun. It's the same with MagicBands. Just wait till your kids look up and ask “Daddy, why are we standing in line while those people don't have to?”

A second take-away lesson comes from the “long-range” nature of the wireless technology associated with MagicBands. With a good enough network and smart enough tracking software, park vendors, characters, hackers, and identity thieves will literally be able to “see you coming.”

Did you buy a vegetarian lunch? Shake Minnie's hand but not Mickey's? Perhaps you visited the washroom every half hour? Sporting the Disney version of a prisoner's ankle bracelet, you're sending a constant flow of information to a system that's trying to decide what to sell you next.

Disney Chairman Thomas O. Staggs insists that all the features of the wristband can be turned off. If you don't want Cinderella to call your little princess by name, well that's your problem. Of course, you cannot opt out of the core tracking functionality of the devices used by Disney for market research.

Disney's creepy MagicBands serve as the proving ground for the “please track me” world that marketers dream about every night, as well as a laboratory for a grand experiment. Just how much privacy will you surrender for a service or status that you feel is valuable?

Of course, the minute you leave the park, you can toss that MagicBand in the trash. Or you can keep it and try to figure out how it works and how it can be tricked. I suspect several dozen people who attend DEF CON every year are working on hacking these things right now.

While Disney's implementation seems especially problematic because it is completely controlled by them and fits on wrists that are three inches in diameter, it does not take a lot of imagination to see how this concept could easily extend into the wider world.

Most people are already carrying a generic version of the MagicBand called a smartphone. Indeed, a suite of apps with names like Family GPS Tracker allow you to follow your loved ones, or anyone who gives permission, and track them on a map.

Smartphone tracking permission can sometimes be granted surreptitiously. There are many ways to put malware on phones, the latest being via “Black Widow” phone chargers that not only charge your phone, but also install rogue software to track you, read all your messages, perhaps even plan a good time to rob your house.

Indeed some educational sites like
pleaserobme.com
have been created to dramatize the risks of putting things online like “Whee … we're all on the way to Hawaii. Dog's at the dog sitter's. Neighbor's picking up the mail. Back in two weeks. Aloha!!!”

It's a good thing that dog's safely at the dog sitter's, because pets that are home alone do indeed get stolen, or at least hassled by the police.

I tell this tale with a bit of trepidation because it was imparted to me by a gun-toting officer of the law in a place of liquid refreshment. However, I have every reason to believe it is 100% true and it illustrates an important point of technocreepiness: Give somebody physical access to your technology, even briefly, and they can effectively “own” you. I also know that the person who told me this story would never be allowed to put it in writing, so here goes.

My Federal law enforcement buddies needed to do a “black bag job” on a certain organized crime figure's house. This involved entering the premises to install a piece of spyware on the suspect's ­computer. So they sent him a nice letter from a local restaurant inviting the whole family to a complimentary meal, reservations required, of course.

On the night of this expedition, once the family was gone, my Fed friends opened the front door and were confronted with the family pets. A dog and a cat.

The dog was no problem, or at least “nothing that a nice juicy steak wouldn't take care of.” They had come prepared with fresh meat. The family cat, on the other hand, dashed out the front door. Several burly Federal agents were now dispatched to hunt down the animal, staying in touch by secure radio. After a while, they reported back: “We have the suspect in custody.” The keystroke recorder was safely installed, and the cat was returned. They locked the door the same way they got in. They did notice a large amount of yowling and barking as they departed, but thought nothing of it.

“The f****** feds broke into my house and switched my cat!” the man told his criminal buddies the next day. A case of mistaken feline identity, but at least the keystroke recorder did its job.

I was once hired by the CEO of a company to do a similar covert intervention on a corrupt employee's computer in the middle of the night. I discovered that the office building's lights were programmed to go off at 6 PM. I knew it would arouse suspicion if I turned them on and that fact showed up in a log. I too had come prepared, so I had a romantic candlelit session installing the evidence-gathering device. The employee resigned the following week.
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Today, of course, penetrations like these would be done remotely and the guy would probably have video surveillance all over his house. He would certainly be keeping tabs on his pets and possessions with a few cameras.

These days, the business of pets is booming, especially with respect to technology. There are people using technology to relate to their pets in ways that are usually reserved for kids of the non-fur-bearing variety. And, it's getting creepier by the day.

The motto of Biscuits and Baths, at 87
^th
Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan, is “The most fun your dog can have without you.” They offer an extensive program, including: “Frolic in Central Park. Eat an all-organic lunch. Take an afternoon nap. Urinate on a tree.” Even at a high end doggie day care like Biscuits and Baths, owners still fret about their pets during the day. That's why some pet facilities are sprouting the same video technology you can use to spy on your human kids in their day care.

And if you do leave your precious pet home alone, technology also offers solutions such as the Petcube. Its creator, Alex Neskin, wanted to amuse his pet Chihuahua Rocky who was left home alone. Since Rocky's favorite activity is chasing a laser pointer, Neskin taped one to a web camera that he could control remotely. He also allowed friends access to the website so that they too could play with Rocky.

There is also a simpler solution called Pintofeed. It allows you to remotely dispense food for your pets, but there's no loudspeaker to let your pet know when dinner is served. Once we accept that pets are indeed child surrogates for many people, these technological accommodations don't seem that weird. But then we move into new territory, like animal selfies.

Cats now have their own photo sharing app, Snapcat. It was reportedly cobbled together in 24 hours at a Berlin hackathon. and allows cats to take a self-portrait by swiping their paw across a smartphone. Clearly some people take their pets as seriously as they do children.

The real creepiness here is that we have distanced ourselves so much from our pets, both physically and psychologically, that we feel we need to make it up to them with technologies like Petcube, Pintofeed, and Snapcat. Some people are so concerned about the welfare of their pets that they even write them into their will.

Real estate tycoon Leona Helmsley left a $12 million trust fund to her female Maltese dog, Trouble, while cutting two grandchildren out of her will completely.
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A judge reduced the pooch's purse to a mere $2 million. That probably would have covered many years in a nice suite with room service and twice-a-day walks by the hotel's concierge. However, Trouble only outlived his doting owner by three years.
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You don't have to be a billionaire to make thoughtful provisions for your pet. Animals can inherit wealth in most U.S. states, which have guidelines for a formal “pet trust.” Other countries, like Canada, don't allow leaving money directly to dogs, cats, birds, or squirrels, but your fur kids can be provided for within regular trust structures.
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One Canadian “make your own will” site,
www.formalwill.ca
, has a downloadable form for a “Pet Guardian Agreement,” providing directions for feeding, hiring groomers, walkers, and even instructions for when heroic medical treatments are to be given.
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The pet form costs the same ($59 CAD) as the one that covers your human offspring. Perhaps the reason this is offered as an online service is that most of us would feel like an idiot discussing cat food brands in front of a lawyer who was billing us $350 an hour.

A study by scientists at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna reported striking similarities between owner-dog and parent-child relationships. Researcher Lisa Horn wrote that the “unique relationship between adult dogs and their human owners bears a remarkable resemblance to an infant attachment bond: dogs are dependent on human care and their behavior seems specifically geared to engage their owners' care-giving system.”
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So dogs, at least, are genetically engineered to suck up to us to make sure they get fed, walked, and, sometimes, remembered in the will.

Our fixation with pets, often elevating them to the status of family members and surrogate children, is source of some amusement in other countries where the concept of a yearly vet checkup or gourmet dog food is seen as risible.

An ad campaign that ran in New York subway cars in 2012 purported to offer pet makeovers, parodying the style of a well-known local plastic surgeon. The ad turned out to be a clever tongue-in-cheek promotion for Nick Kroll's sketch comedy show on Comedy Central, but there actually is a thriving business in cosmetic surgery for dogs, and not just for facelifts to correct drooping eyelids. The other end of the pooch also gets attention.

A Kansas City, Missouri, company called CTI Corporation has spared over half a million male dogs, cats, bulls, monkeys, horses, water buffalos, rats, and yes, prairie dogs, from embarrassment at the off-leash park or paddock. The company sells silicon testicular implants called Neuticles®, which are used to fill empty scrotums after an animal has been “fixed.”

In his book
Going … Going … Nuts: The Story Has To Be Told
, inventor Gregg Miller says he owes the multi-million dollar idea to his beloved bloodhound Buck:

Buck looked up at me with a puzzled expression—his Bloodhound look of worry and concern. He looked back down again—and then back at me a second time with an expression of “where did they go—what has happened to me?” He didn't clean himself—only had that look of bewilderment. Buck knew they were gone and for over a week seemed sluggish and depressed.”
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Working with a vet to solve Buck's problem, Miller's work not only earned him U.S. patent #5,868,140 and a thriving business. He was also the 2005 winner of the tongue-in-cheek IG Nobel Prize in medicine, a fact he proudly trumpets on his webpage.
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Miller's company also does a lot of really good things, like making ear and eye prostheses for injured animals. Neuticles® Original are very reasonable: the medium size for dogs 30-60 pounds are only $84 each, though you'll probably want to get the pair for $139. You might also throw in a tank top sporting the company's slogan, “It's Like Nothing Ever Changed.” Though you can order Neuticles® on the Internet, they're not approved for human use, especially not the horse, bull, or water buffalo sizes.

Why do Neuticles® seem like a creepy use of technology? Surely not because, as some might suggest, it's a waste of medical resources that could have been given to humans. After all this is a procedure, paid for by the pet owner, done by a veterinarian, and taking an extra three to five minutes when they're working in there anyway. It's more about how we view the minds of our domestic animals.

The idea that our pets have fragile psyches that need nurturing does go a long way to imputing human emotions to non-human creatures. While cats purr and dog wag their tails, and this certainly seems correlated with happiness, it is quite a leap to assume that they've having the same kind of thoughts as we do. Then again, soon we might be able to ask them what's on their minds.