IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2016 - 3

Notes from the Editor

The Battle for Privacy
in Your Pocket
By Peter Corcoran

s editor of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine for the past
five years, I get to see and
review quite a few topical and
contemporary articles on many aspects
of consumer electronics (CE) devices.
In the last two or three years, there has
been a growing stream of articles with
a focus on the security of personal data
and communications and on more
broadly scoped topics such as privacy,
trust, and various forms of "veillance."
There is no doubt we live in an age
of persistent connectedness and are
increasingly empowered as individuals
to generate large volumes of digital
data. These can range from simple text
messages and e-mails, to photographs,
video clips, and a broad variety of
metadata extending from our location
throughout the day to the web pages we
browse, the online stores we visit, the
travel arrangements we make, the financial transactions we initiate, and the
social networks in which we participate.

data gives them direct and often nearexclusive access to you, the consumer.
It is an intimate one-on-one relationship that corporations have longed for
but could not achieve in the past. Television was the first generation of electronic technology that allowed corporations
to reach out to consumers. It was better
than newspapers, as the visual impact
enabled a stronger level of intimacy. But
still, the relationship was with demographic groups rather than individuals.
Then the personal computer arrived,
but it wasn't possible to get a foothold
among consumers through these devices,
which were too "serious" for people to
use for leisure activities. But the World
Wide Web started to change all that, providing a more visual and interactive
mechanism to link computer users to
networked information and services. And
as the web evolved, it became more visual and more interactive, reaching the
point where it has started to displace traditional TV.

GETTING INTIMATE

AUGMENTED LIFESTYLES

Increasingly, our smartphone is the
go-to portal for much of these activities. It has become our portal to the
Internet and the hub of an increasingly
connected digital lifestyle. And all the
data passing through this portal have
become the key to commercial success
for many of today's larger corporations. Handling and managing that

Still, a computer is fixed to a desktop,
so you have to sit down and dedicate
some time to spend with it. Typically, it
sits on a desk in a home office rather
than in your living room. And so the
real breakthrough could only start with
the arrival of the smartphone.
Smartphones are used for a continuously expanding array of applications,
from Internet browsing to e-mailing,
gaming, banking, shopping, and managing travel arrangements, including airfare and car rentals. In combination with

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCE.2016.2558218
Date of publication: 10 August 2016

new network services, they are replacing
traditional taxi services, short-let accommodations, and even the local gym with
more flexible and available "networksourced" alternatives. And for many of
us, they have become the primary tool to
record and document our personal lives
in pictures and video, a connected gateway that we carry with us all day long.
The "smarter" and more capable
these devices become, the more they
infiltrate our daily activities and blend
themselves into our personal lives. The
ability of a smartphone to augment our
daily lives has already effected substantial changes in social behavior and
enhanced our lives in many ways.
Smartphones enable us to make better
use of slack time during the daily commute or while waiting at the airport or
for everyone to arrive and settle before
a meeting. And they ease our lives in
everything from driving to managing
our growing collections of personal
images and videos. Very few of us can
envisage a life without our phone, yet
these devices are not even a decade
old! Like it or not, we have entered the
Age of the Smartphone.

A NEXUS FOR
PERSONAL PRIVACY
We could say that, because the smartphone has become so central to our
daily lives, it is also at the heart of personal privacy. As even more compelling
and pervasive services and tools are
developed on smartphones and continue to simplify and augment our daily
lives, so will more of our personal,
july 2016

IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

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