The Internet of Things (IoT) is, in part, an information handling system that can remove humans from the information handling process.
How are we to understand privacy when considering informational systems that handle personal information in ways that impact people’s lives, when there is no human operator in direct contact with that personal information?

In the latest paper by Dr Adam Henschke — Privacy, the Internet of Things and State Surveillance: Handling Personal Information within an Inhuman System — he argues that these new technologies need to take concepts like privacy into account, but also, that we ought also to take these technologies into account to reconsider and perhaps reconceptualise privacy.

The paper argues that while an inhuman system like the IoT does not necessarily violate the interpersonal privacy of people, if the IoT is used as part of a state surveillance program, a political notion of privacy may be violated.