Cunningly Smart Phones: Deceit, Manipulation, and Private Thoughts Revealed

Copyright © 2015 by Jack M. Wedam.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Cover Design by Nathan Hartley Maas

I want to thank Nathan for designing an excellent book cover. I also thank him for his patience as we worked through many styles and concepts to get a book cover that visually portrays the essence of this book.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 06/30/2015

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

A Cunningly Smart Spy

Mary Godwin

What’s Emotion Got To Do With It?

Reading Your Emotions And Targeting You

Playing With Emotions Is Very Profitable

Manipulating With Fear

The Belongings Test: What You Buy, And Where You Go, Reveals More Than You Realize

Big Data Gets To Know You, One Very Small Piece Of Information At A Time

Anonymous, But Very Well-Known

The Genius Of Facebook

The Eyes Are The Window To The Mind

Electronic Mind Readers?

Can A Mechanism Accurately Reflect Your Thoughts?

Wearables: For Your Health Or For Their Profit?

Someday Soon, Maybe Very Soon

Legal And Ethical Issues

What Can You Do?

Glossary

Bibliography, References, And Websites

Listed By Author’s First Name

Listed By Government Agency

Department Of Homeland Security

United States District Court, Northern California, San Jose Division (Litigation)

Federal Trade Commission

Office Of The Under Secretary Of Defense For Acquisition, Technology, And Logistics

Securities And Exchange Commission

US Attorney General

Listed By Patent (Assignee, Inventor, Or Title, Whichever Is Likely More Relevant To The Reader)

Listed By Subject Or Topic

Listed By Website

Notes

This book is dedicated to my mom, who started badly but finished well. It is also dedicated to my dad, who guided me, loved me, fed me, nurtured me, and taught me well.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to acknowledge the many excellent reviewers whose comments made this book much more readable and understandable than my rough manuscript. This book would not have come to fruition without Audrey Charles. She read several rough drafts of my manuscript and provided many suggestions that greatly improved the manuscript. I also want to thank several other reviewers who provided me with helpful suggestions. These include Andy Aguirre, R. Clare Layton, Steve and Patty White, Jason Pike, John Short, Dr. Jim Gansberg, Dr. John and Cathy Maas, Dr. Albert Wedam, and Norene Wedam.

PREFACE

O n September 21, 2007, the Department of Homeland Security awarded a contract to Battelle Memorial Institute to build a future attribute screening technology (FAST) demonstration laboratory. ¹ Headlines such as Behavioral biometrics to detect terrorists entering U.S. ² and Israel startup uses behavioral science to identify terrorists ³ announced that the field of behavioral biometrics was in full stride.

Allegedly, behavioral biometric technologies are more accurate than a lie detector. Evidently, some nongovernment entities noticed the research and development of these new technologies. A few years after 2007, several corporations commercialized similar technologies—and the paradigm shifted drastically. Whereas in the first wave of development, the aim of using behavioral biometric technology was to help governments identify potential terrorists and to result in enhanced security measures to protect the public, the next wave of development, in stark contrast, saw the emergence of technologies that enabled corporations to target the public. The result of the latter was enhanced profits for corporations at your expense and an invasion of your privacy on an industrial level.

* * *

Allow me to discuss what qualifies me to write this book. I learned about neuroanatomy and neurology while studying to be of doctor of veterinary medicine more than three decades ago. I and my fellow students were required to know a great deal about neuroanatomy and neurology, which enabled us to conduct thorough neurological examinations of our patients—dogs, cats, horses, and other animals. The results of those examinations led to greater accuracy in making a diagnosis of disease or damage involving the nervous system. For example, abnormal eye movements and the eye’s pupil response to light provide important information to help detect the location of damage to the brain.

Scientists have only recently revealed the function of saccades in the normally functioning brain. Saccades are very fast eye movements that allow the subconscious to monitor what is in the peripheral vision. When the function of saccades became known, I was fascinated. As I conducted research to discover more details, I learned how saccades and pupil responses could be used to probe the subconscious mind without the awareness or consent of the person being targeted. Intrigued, I decided to search further.

Mathematical sociology may sound like an awkward combination of disciplines, but it enables corporations to extract detailed information about you by analyzing your activity on social media websites. Mathematical sociology uses techniques that are similar to those used in epidemiology.⁴ I earned a master’s degree in veterinary preventive medicine, which included the study of epidemiology. My understanding of epidemiology enabled me to understand how mathematical sociology can be used to harvest valuable information about people from their social activities and participation with social media and social networks.

An understanding of patents and the patenting process has greatly facilitated my research into these new technologies. I was awarded a patent⁵ for a finger-actuated electronic control apparatus. I am not a patent attorney. However, in the process of obtaining a patent I learned that patents provide a wealth of information about new technologies. Inventors must explain in excruciating detail what their patent is about and how their device or process is different from other devices or processes.

I discuss numerous patents in this book; however, you do not have to accept my explanations of them. I provide many references and links so you can read the patents yourself and make your own inferences. Alternatively, you can hire patent attorneys, neuroscientists, and other experts to explain the patents to you.

* * *

In this book, I reference material from two of my previous books, Google Glass Can Read Your Mind (2014) and Billionaires and eGenies are $elling You Out (2013). This notice serves as a general citation of my other books.

INTRODUCTION

I need your help.

We need to spread the word about consumers’ Internet privacy. I hope this book will galvanize the public into action, the same way Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed inspired people to act. Because of Nader’s book, a nationwide groundswell of people clashed with the titans of the automobile industry, which were then as powerful as the titans of the Internet are today. The public ultimately prevailed against the titans of the automobile industry. The result was safer automobiles and fewer highway fatalities. If enough people demand change this time, then we can prevail and take back control of our rights and privacy.

Together we can push back and force change. This is your chance to change things for the better. You can help yourself and others by pushing back and opposing the titans of the Internet who are trampling on our privacy. If you are a little hesitant about subscribing to the ideas presented in this book, then please make up your mind after reading it, not before.

I am a proponent of an ethical capitalist system in the United States. I believe that when corporations are deceptive, they deserve to be called out. I also want smartphone users to be aware of how smartphones and smartwatches may soon be able to be used in ways that few people would welcome.

I opted to keep the main body of this text to about half the length of other books that address Internet privacy, information technology, etc. As such, the main body of this text is fewer than thirty-five thousand words, not including the glossary, the bibliography, and the notes. A book of this length should appeal to readers who have an interest in their privacy but who don’t have the time to read the longer books on the subject. Therefore, this book is not meant to be an exhaustive study of the many very technical fields of science and mathematics that have recently become interwoven with the pursuit of profits. Instead, this book is meant to be an overview to aid the reader in connecting the dots between mathematics (statistics), cryptanalytics, neuroscience, psychology, and marketing.

I struggled to simplify complex topics in order to make this book readable at the twelfth-grade level.¹ In order to achieve that objective, I avoided discussing many of the complex details of various topics in the main text. Some reviewers asked me to include more details, whereas other reviewers asked me to include fewer details. To satisfy both groups, I moved some explanations from the main body of the text to the notes so that the information would be available to those who wanted more detail. A glossary is included to provide more information. This book also has a long bibliography that contains many references. You may access these references if you want to learn more.

Almost half of this book is devoted to the glossary, the bibliography, references, and notes. This is a large amount of space devoted to these areas. As mentioned above, it moves much of the complex discussion out of the main body of the manuscript and allows the reading to flow smoothly for the rapid reader who does not want to bother with the details. More importantly, Cunningly Smart Phones provides an abundance of evidence to support assertions that may be denied by the titans of the Internet. The titans of the Internet are very good at making accurate inferences about you. This book will provide you with ample information so you can make accurate inferences about their activities and also come to see how their activities might affect you in ways you may not welcome.

A CUNNINGLY SMART SPY

Y our smartphone is cunningly smart and is quickly becoming even more cunning. Your smartphone is spying on you and sharing many of your secrets. ¹ Your smartphone is eavesdropping on you, using very crafty methods to do so. We typically think of spying as activity directed against our enemies. However, things have drastically changed in recent years. Espionage-related tools and techniques that were developed to defend us from our enemies are now being used by many corporations to spy on us. Some of these have been developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) or its forerunner, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).

Smartphone and other technology companies are gathering huge amounts of your personal information and thoroughly analyzing it. If you are wondering what difference this makes, then you will be interested in the chapter titled Someday Soon, Maybe Very Soon, which illustrates how your personal information could soon be used to manipulate you. If you do not like the notional scenarios of manipulation, then you may read about several real cases of manipulation and economic discrimination in chapter 8 of Bruce Schneier’s 2015 book Data and Goliath.²

Smartphones have various sensors that provide some clever ways to capture people’s thoughts and emotions in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago. After your personal information is gathered, it is quickly auctioned.³ Electronic devices can now accurately reflect a subject’s actual thoughts.⁴ Will your private thoughts soon be auctioned off without your awareness or consent?

Some Internet-based corporations know your likes and dislikes, your emotions, and even subtle changes in your mood.⁵ They can pinpoint where you will be tomorrow⁶ and even in future years.⁷ Some corporations know very private details about you that you may not want them (or other people) to know.⁸These corporations can more or less know what you’re thinking about.⁹ Marketers can use your information to target you with sophisticated advertisements. Marketing psychologists have learned how to manipulate consumers’ brains to induce a state much like being in love. Having also learned how cocaine stimulates the brain, some marketing psychologists have learned how to stimulate the relevant part of the brain with advertisements.¹⁰ This means that cravings can be implanted and stimulated in consumers.

Cocaine is illegal. Nevertheless, the sale of cocaine generates huge revenues. In stark contrast, new business models that bring Internet titans and marketing psychologists together are legal and are much more profitable than cocaine. The old adage Follow the money will help you make sense of many recent developments in Internet approaches. The old saying There is no free lunch needs to be updated. Insiders in Silicon Valley now say, If the service is free, then you’re the product.¹¹

Many Internet-based corporations are scrambling¹² to find out more about you. In the process, they are trampling on your privacy much more than the US government is able to do. Even if government agencies ignored all the privacy laws and spied on you, they could not match the ability of Internet-based corporations to invade your privacy. It costs money to spy on you, store information about you and analyze your activities. Even spies are constrained by economic fundamentals, budgets, and economies of scale. The government cannot sell your information and, in so doing, recover the expense of their spying. In contrast, many corporations are making huge profits by spying on you and selling your secrets.

A Wall Street Journal investigation found that one of the fastest-growing businesses on the Internet is the business of spying on consumers. The Wall Street Journal published a series of articles beginning with The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets,¹³ which included many fascinating and disturbing details. The Federal Trade Commission has concluded that Google has done real harm to consumers.¹⁴ Can we trust corporations like Google? The technologies that spy on you did not just suddenly and serendipitously sprout up in the past few years. Following is a brief historical review to provide you with some context and make it easier for you to understand the current situation.

Theodore Paraskevakos was an inventor who was awarded more than fifty patents worldwide.¹⁵ He is generally credited with inventing the first modern smartphone by combining the telephone with some computational ability.¹⁶ However, there is much more to the story. Computers in smartphones evolved from a long line of mechanical computers, the first of which was developed just as World War II began. Alan Turing developed the bombe¹⁷ for Great Britain. The bombe, a cryptanalytic machine that deciphered secret messages encoded by the Enigma device in Germany during the era of World War II, was featured in the 2014 movie The Imitation Games. This bombe was a real game changer, as it ushered in electronic computers. Now, seven decades later, smartphones have risen to the apex¹⁸ of a nexus consisting of scientific disciplines such as mathematics, sociology, psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. These are all integrated into programs run by computers that are much more sophisticated than those capable of deciphering Enigma messages.

The Economist ran an article titled Smartphone security: The spy in your pocket, which revealed how spies working in the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Great Britain’s equivalent of the National Security Agency (NSA), had stolen encryption keys to SIM (subscriber identity module) cards, which allowed spies to quickly decrypt conversations and data from smartphones.¹⁹ Although this news may shock some people, it should not be shocking, because corporations are already gathering much more data from smartphones than are government spies. With the new iOS9, Apple’s new iPhone will be able to tell exactly how often, when and how iPhone users have sex.²⁰ Smartwatches can determine when a person is sleeping or having sex.²¹ (Can you trust corporations with that information?) Moreover, corporations soon will have tools so sophisticated that they will be able to gather even more information from more people and to make more accurate inferences about you than government spies ever could. That is unless corporations share their technology with the governments spies or the government spies hide