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Amazon details its low-bandwidth Sidewalk neighborhood network
- gilad 6y agoAre there legal implications on an ISP subscriber if illegal activity is conducted via their network? I would very much mind sharing a ‘small fraction of bandwidth’ while having arbitrarily large legal exposure.
- gruez 6y agoMy guess is that the legal exposure would be minimal because you'll only be able to connect to whitelisted endpoints (basically whoever partners up with AMZN).
- adrianN 6y agoEven if legally you're in the clear, you'd still run the risk of getting all you electronics confiscated until the police figure out that you were just sharing your bandwidth, no?
- panpanna 6y agoPiratebox [1] over lora? Is this the future of piracy? [1] https://piratebox.cc/ https://piratebox.cc/
- jl2718 6y agoMax 500MB per device per spec. Also 80kbpsmax , so, probably not.
- stainforth 6y agoYou could share revolutionary texts like the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Das Kapital at least.
- jl2718 6y agoI think the security white paper addresses this silently by making the claim that the devices can’t be tracked due to a combination of encryption and periodic re-addressing. I’m skeptical of the security guarantees, but it’s a good step.
- kevincox 6y agoBased on my reading of the article all traffic is sent to amazon. So presumably you won't get in trouble for trickling a small encrypted channel of data to Amazon. Basically with the fixed Amazon endpoint it bypasses direct illegal activity and general network abuse. Of course this means that everything goes through Amazon and that if someone gets your IP from Amazon you still might have some difficulty.
- marta_morena_29 6y ago> Amazon expects that users won’t mind sharing a small fraction of their bandwidth with their neighbors. Very interested to see how this will be protected against exploits.
- p0rkbelly 6y agoseems that Xfinity already does something similar, where by default, anyone can connect to your network as a guest (if they are an Xfinity customer themselves)
- rayhendricks 6y agoSo this is basically yet another reason to not let Amazon echo/Alexa on your network.
- dav43 6y agoFrom a technical and privacy standpoint, is there a huge difference to the Apple U1 device network - with the limited amount of information that’s been made public? I’m coming from a position of limited knowledge on both platforms, so curious.
- duxup 6y agoAmazon's Ring device and how they work with police raises a lot of questions about what these devices will report, to whom, and etc: https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/10/8/20903536/amazon-ring-doorbell-civil-rights-police-partnerships https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/10/8/20903536/amazon-ring-do... Makes you wonder that even if you choose not to share with police, if your amazon devices will help someone else's device do so...
- gruez 6y ago>Makes you wonder that even if you choose not to share with police, if your amazon devices will help someone else's device do so... It's safe to assume whoever's buying a ring doorbell probably has internet access as well so it's a moot point.
- duxup 6y agoI'm guessing those devices will happily use the sidewalk network as a backup as well, you still might be sharing.
- heavyset_go 6y ago> Makes you wonder that even if you choose not to share with police This is a false choice, because police don't need your permission to obtain video evidence on Amazon's servers if they have a warrant or court order. They don't even have to notify you if they look at it or use it as evidence, either. Most of the time law enforcement just asks providers nicely for the data they want access to, and providers comply. No warrant is even needed in that scenario.
- maxioatic 6y agoWhitepaper link: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/sidewalk/privacy_security_whitepaper_final.pdf https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/sidewalk/privacy_secu...
- jl2718 6y agoIt specifies that it will accept L1 connections from: LoRa, FSK, or BLE. So this is basically L2/3. Great, but is it an open-source license-free standard that anybody can put on a (e.g.) RPi, or is it just their way of dominating the IoT? Is there an IEEE for secure stateless mesh routing? I would be shocked to hear that AMZN is the first to figure this out.
- detaro 6y agoThis isn't mesh routing, but rather pretty much what e.g. LoraWAN does (devices send data to gateways that forward it to "the cloud" that forwards it to applications). Nothing revolutionary from a technical or protocol POV.
- anigbrowl 6y agoLow bandwidth mesh networking is super interesting but I would prefer not to have it supplied by Buy'n'Large.
- joezydeco 6y agoWell, there’s always Helium I suppose...if they haven’t pivoted again by now.
- forcer 6y agoI am checking their homepage. It does not seem like they are doing something else? Still its a network to low bandwidth network to connect devices ?
- joezydeco 6y agoHelium started out as a local IOT play but realized that nobody wanted their custom radio stuff. So now they're doing mesh-something-with-blockchain.
- cjsawyer 6y agoWho else has an install base like Amazon in their Alexas and Rings? No TinyCorp could just decide to roll out a service like this. One of the few upsides of having giant companies is seeing the work of their equally big R&D departments
- ignoramous 6y ago> Who else has an install base like Amazon in their Alexas and Rings? https://starry.com/ https://starry.com/ and https://volkfi.com/ https://volkfi.com/ are doing their bits.
- donalhunt 6y agoVolkfi don't exactly inspire confidence. :/
- dano 6y agoLoRa is super interesting and this is an absolutely logical step for Amazon and for Google Home. Providing ubiquitous gateways for IoT devices could enable an entirely new markets. Not everyone wants to spend $150 for a LoRaWAN gateway, nor do they see the value in doing so. Devices that come pre-configured with LoRa and can connect to a network through an Echo / Nest / Home device will function right out of the box. The marginal cost of adding something like LoRa or BLE to existing Internet connections is essentially zero.
- panpanna 6y ago> could enable an entirely new markets. You mean entirely new ways to get our data? Why do you think Google home devices are sold at a loss?
- jl2718 6y ago> The marginal cost of adding something like LoRa or BLE to existing Internet connections is essentially zero. It is so painful to watch Comcast fail a completely captive customer base in IoT. It would be so easy for them to become the centerpiece of a wide array of independent companies developing devices. Instead they hand the customers to Gooplezon for zero benefit. Comcast, you ignored my job application to do this for you years ago. That’s okay; I will consult for you for free, and you will become the good guys in this market.
- tomcam 6y ago> Sidewalk, which is somewhat akin to a mesh network that, with the right amount of access points, could easily cover a whole neighborhood, is now getting closer to launch Doesn’t that make it the very definition of a mesh network?
- Animats 6y agoNot enough bandwidth for video. So their various camera devices can't do much with it. Not even their new home security drone.[1] [1] https://youtu.be/I71IBh3qHX0 https://youtu.be/I71IBh3qHX0
- dannyw 6y agoCan take compressed monochrome pictures, or low FPS video. 80 kilobytes a second plus tailor-made compression, plus 1 channel instead of 3 like RGB, can do a lot, actually.
- Thorrez 6y ago> The maximum bandwidth a device can use is capped at 500MB Per day? Per month? Per year? For the device's lifetime?
- jaywalk 6y agoYeah, it's weird how they stated that. It sounds like it's for the lifetime of the device, which means a device could theoretically use up it's allotment in under two hours...
- kangaroozach 6y agoSidewalk for my own devices? Great! Sidewalk for my neighbors devices? Nope. Wait, it’s all or nothing? Seems like a privacy issue.
- csmattryder 6y agoIf you track the user ID along a route of IoT IDs (which they're totally not doing), factoring in the path taken and time between stops, you could probably find out which stores the user had been (window) shopping at. For a massive e-commerce platform, it would be great info to digitally retarget the physically-abandoned shopping carts.
- me_me_me 6y agoWhat are you on, you lunatic? Free WIFI free WIFI /s That is sarcastic but definitely not a straw-man. I had those conversations and its quite sad to see how shortsighted people get when you attach free to something. People are going mad over wearing mask since its a tool of control. But expose a mass surveillance system and noone bat an eye. Implement free grid wifi that will be able to track you across city and you are the next jesus. They will probably try to fingerprint you even if you are not connected.
- edf13 6y agoAmazon detail: https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?ie=UTF8&node=21328123011 https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?ie=UTF8&node=213281...
- mellosouls 6y agoFurther creepy ingress masquerading as helpfulness by the tech giants.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoI really want development in low-bandwidth network to accelerate, not because I want to switch ON my garden lights outside my WiFi range but I think it could deliver network access to remote location for education and communication. Education has come to a standstill for marginalised communities in several parts of the world, online education has become a norm as access to devices/Internet has been taken for granted, but it is causing irreversible harm to those who were already at the receiving end of the inequality. Obviously low-bandwidth network isn't going to deliver Zoom classes, but I think a combination of broadcasting educational content through traditional free-to-air television/radio and low-power computer on a low-bandwidth network for text communication with the educator can help deliver remote education for the underprivileged[1]. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/149-remote-education-for-underprivileged-education-poverty https://needgap.com/problems/149-remote-education-for-underp...
- asim 6y agoSide note: Is it me or has Amazon been announcing a lot of things lately? I think the fact that Amazon is beginning to rule the fabric of the world and is controlled by the richest man in the world makes me slightly uneasy. I can't really place it right now but something tells me a decade from now this is going to be a big problem and they were just left unchecked to proliferate throughout the world until we became entirely dependent on them. Dictators and surveillance states often start in very non-obvious ways and most tend to not even see the issue when the exist within it. If the world is consumed by Amazon, what then?
- turing_complete 6y agoYeah, imagine if they were to improve our life even more!
- asim 6y agoAnd this is the unfortunate dichotomy. We are thankful to our abusers. We often don't even understand how they are using us for their own benefits but we are grateful to them. Something is awry but because we are reaping the benefits now we're blind to it.
- turing_complete 6y agoIt is not abusing, it is trading. The world is not zero-sum.
- jaywalk 6y agoAnd that attitude is exactly why it's scary.
- dannyw 6y agoHedge against that by buying their shares. Sometimes I think the big caps are just call options on future corpo-governments.
- turing_complete 6y agoWhy does this link to techcrunch instead of the actual source / whitepaper? https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/sidewalk/privacy_security_whitepaper_final.pdf https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/sidewalk/privacy_secu...
- projektfu 6y agoPerhaps the submitter was reading TechCrunch and not randomly browsing Amazon's press releases or wherever you might find that.
- acruns 6y agoI worked with a casion who uses BLE to track you throughout their properties that is similar to this idea. The BLE along with their own data (w/l and how much) plus their app (https://www2.mgmresorts.com/app/ https://www2.mgmresorts.com/app/) gave them every detail they needed to keep you playing slots. Headed for the front doors, boom free credit, headed to the elevators, free buffet, sitting by the pool for too long, new tables are opening, you get the idea. And of course since they own half the casions in vegas they can track you as you go to other casinos. Want to do fun stuff? Who is in your room with you? how long? where in your room? How long does it take you to get ready before heading to the show? What time did you go to bed / get up? What did you have for dinner, who did you have dinner with? Who did you chat with in the lobby and for how long? Where did they go after your chat? Where did you go? On and on. Not that they collect and use that data (see how I said collect and use?) but they could. They are only interested in your spending your money and could really care less who and how you have sex with or if you met up with a local coke dealer in the lobby, but cops might, it's all too much IMO. Alot of you are devs, let your mind run wild with the data you could collect and sell, and then tell me if anything amzaon released yesterday isn't creppy.
- jvp 6y agoBut everything you described needs the app to be installed. No app, no problem.
- 7952 6y agoI wonder if this could be used for Corona contact tracing?
- mempko 6y agoCan we call this Amazon Snitch?