Mind the Air Gap

Abstract

The market for domestic and service robots, which can help consumers in their homes, is growing rapidly. Privacy scholars have warned that the deployment of robots in the home can lead to serious privacy risks, since these robots come equipped with sensors that register the environment in which they operate, including the human beings present therein. Moreover, many modern robots are, or will soon become, connected to the internet. This means that they can pass on any data they record, and that they can also be hacked by outsiders. The privacy and security risks are significant with this novel type of technology. In this chapter I argue that attaching robots to the internet does indeed lead to serious privacy and security risks. But I will also argue that there is a straightforward solution that can contribute to eliminating many of these risks, which is left unaddressed in the current debate. Borrowing a term from the field of cybersecurity I will argue that consumer robots ought to be ‘air gapped’, that is they ought not to be connected to the internet or the cloud—expect in a few exceptional cases where network connections are a critical requirement for robots to be able to function properly or effectively. I will explain what air gaps are, how they are used, and which strengths and weaknesses they have. Next, I will critically assess their use as a strategy to prevent privacy and security issues in domestic and service robots. I will argue that it is important to have a debate on the networked character of robots today, since we can now still prevent privacy and security problems in this novel technology, rather than having to remedy them once they are mass-marketed. This is why I propose to have a debate on privacy before design.