Newswatch: Are LED lights spying on you?
At this month’s Euroshop exhibition, the world’s leading retail show in Düsseldorf, Germany, Philips demonstrated an intelligent LED in-store lighting system that communicates location-based information to shoppers via a smartphone app. The lighting system communicates with the app to send special offers and information to the shopper, relevant to their location in the store. The lighting system, is already being piloted with retailers and is claimed to be a boon to personalized shopping. Given that the cyber security and data privacy aspects of the Philips innovation have not be revealed so far it may also prove a boon to paranoid conspiracy theorists and those increasingly worried about ‘Big Data’ and its erosion of civil liberties.
Also this month over in the USA, Newark Liberty Airport revealed that it has installed a lighting system featuring 171 new LED fixtures which form part of a new wireless network that collects and feeds data into security software that will monitor the behavior of people and vehicles at the airport using an array of sensors and eight video cameras around the terminal. Again the issues of data protection access appear to be wooly at present.
Admittedly LED lights serving as network nodes to which sensors and cameras can be connected is not at first sight startlingly different to the concept of CCTV surveillance systems we are all too familiar with but the increased integration of more and more sensor, image processing and monitoring functions into the hitherto benign lighting fixture could have a profound impact on every citizen because of the sheer ubiquity of the lighting systems around the world.
This week in the New York Times Fred H. Cate, director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University, described the potential for misuse as “terrifying”. Cate is primarily concerned about the technology itself but from the process of adopting it, driven by, he said, “that combination of a gee-whiz technology and an event or an opportunity that makes it affordable”. Cate suggested there was often not enough thought being given to what data would actually be useful and how to properly manage it.
At Newark Airport, the Port Authority says it will own and maintain the data it collects. For now, it says, no other agencies have access to it, and a law enforcement agency can obtain it only through a subpoena or written request. Of course hackers don’t tend to go in for many subpoenas or written requests they simply hack into the system.
In many ways the LED did not seem too revolutionary when it was first invented but it has certainly blossomed since then and integrated into LED lighting systems it is moving swiftly from a neat way to help governments and businesses save energy by automatically controlling lights to opening up an expanding market for lights, sensors and software capable of capturing and analyzing vast amounts of data about the habits of citizens.
Almost on a daily basis we’re seeing networked lighting control solutions being installed not just for the energy benefits they offer but for a whole host of non-energy benefits.
Citywide intelligence gathering
In October 2013 Silver Spring Networks, Inc., a leading networking platform and solutions provider for smart energy networks, was selected to deliver the networking platform for a citywide intelligent street lights project in Copenhagen, Denmark. Under a new partnership with Citelum. Silver Spring is expected to begin networking 20,000 street lights in Copenhagen in 2014.
Copenhagen is claimed to be the world’s most sustainable city, and selected Citelum to improve energy efficiency, lower operational costs, enable remote lighting management and control, and improve citizen safety through the enhanced lighting system.
“Silver Spring has been selected by Citelum thanks to its compliant wireless IPv6 smart city networking platform, providing the scale, performance, security and extensibility needed for a city of Copenhagen’s ambition,” said Pierre-Louis Ouvrard, Business Development Director, Citelum.
Together, Citelum and Silver Spring expect to provide multiple LED lamp options, with a single networking platform for Copenhagen’s smart city network.
Silver Spring’s unified networking and software solutions ensure higher levels of reliability, enable broader geographic coverage and are more cost-effective than existing solutions.
Transforming everyday life through lighting systems
Last month Amerlux LLC, a global leader in lighting solutions, and Sensity Systems, a pioneer of Light Sensory Networks (LSNs) and the supplier of the Newark Liberty Airport project, entered into a lighting manufacturer partnership which enables Amerlux to deliver LSN-ready-luminaires in a move to establish Sensity’s NetSense platform as the LSN industry standard.
Amerlux will integrate Sensity’s NetSense technology with motion, photonic, energy, and temperature sensors into their exterior LED lighting solutions. The partnership provides Amerlux customers worldwide with a lighting application platform that can generate valuable data to better understand and manage their physical environment for greater productivity, efficiency, and security.
“Our Lighting Manufacturer Partner (LMP) program is designed to enable lighting companies to easily integrate our NetSense platform, so that they can deliver new levels of value to their customers quickly. Our open, standards-based, multiservice platform enables the industry’s transformation from simple control technology to lighting with truly intelligent networking capabilities, cloud services and partner ecosystems,” said Hugh Martin, chairman and CEO of Sensity Systems. “Signing Amerlux, a lighting technology leader, as our first LMP is a great endorsement of Light Sensory Networks. This will help accelerate Light Sensory Network deployments on a global scale and the adoption of new applications and services that will also transform everyday life for citizens all over the world.”
Commenting on the new partnership deal with Sensity, Chuck Campagna, president and CEO of Amerlux, said: “As a result of partnering with Sensity, we are opening up an entirely new area in lighting applications and services for our company that goes far beyond lighting controls by offering an array of third-party applications on our SmartSite LSN products that will include video-based security and public safety, parking management, predictive maintenance and more. These new offerings will provide us with a significant competitive advantage.”
Under the agreement, Amerlux will initially offer NetSense-enabled lighting applications and services on its SmartSite LSN luminaire, such as centralized lighting control, energy optimization scheduling,predictive maintenance and real-time fault notification, measurement and verification, analytics and reporting and demand response.
Sensity’s NetSense platform is the first Light Sensory Network technology to provide an open Application Programming Interface (API) for third parties to leverage for application development. This secure interface allows NetSense customers to engage application partners to deliver services in areas such as security, parking management, retail analytics, and more. In the future, Amerlux customers with Sensity-enabled LED luminaires will be able to deploy these applications and services to do some of the following:
- Enhance security by extending the security perimeter
- Provide advanced parking services for both drivers and parking operators
- Provide retail analytics with data gathered anywhere outdoor lights are placed
- Monitor an enterprise or university campus for CO2 emissions, seismic activity, carbonmonoxide, pollutants, humidity or UV radiation
The Light Sensory Networks from Sensity is encrypted but those hackers do love a challenge don’t they?
So are the LED lights spying on you and me? Not quite yet maybe but one thing is for sure at present the technology is moving so rapidly that no one seems to knows exactly what LED lighting is going to be capable of in the future.
Don’t forget Li-fi (optical Wi-fi) is another technology just lurking around the corner which will mean that all that data everyone is collecting (secure or otherwise) will be able to whizz around the world even faster than before.
There is a growing sense that legislators worldwide are going to have their work cut out to put some policy frameworks in place to limit the data harvesting scope and security of LED lighting-based networks. The potential seems almost endless – after all who realized the power of the smartphone in its infancy?
Related articles and links:
News articles:
Is intelligent in-store lighting the ultimate personal shopper?
LED luminaires support Light Sensory Networks to provide real-time data for cloud applications
DALI interface converter delivers precise indoor lighting control
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