Cory Doctorow on John Deere's Tractor Killswitch

https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8

 

Most of us have heard about the Russian looters who stole a bunch of John Deere equipment from a Ukrainian dealer and hauled it to Chechnya, only to be foiled when the dealer remotely disabled all those implements. Heartwarming! But . . . This essay ties together several issues in a very neat, very disturbing bundle. The big surprise for me was

the fact that John Deere sells data (on soil density, moisture, crop yields, etc.) mined from its farm implements to funny-money speculators who use the information to bet against farmers.

I think any thoughtful person realizes that new tech comes with harms along with its benefits. Doctorow is right, though, to focus on the harms. We end users are being kept in the dark about the down sides.