James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, told lawmakers Tuesday that governments across the globe are likely to employ the Internet of Things as a spy tool, which will add to global instability already being caused by infectious disease, hunger, climate change, and artificial intelligence.

Clapper addressed two different committees on Tuesday—the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee—and for the first time suggested that the Internet of Things could be weaponized by governments. He did not name any countries or agencies in regard to the IoT, but a recent Harvard study suggested US authorities could harvest the IoT for spying purposes.

"Smart devices incorporated into the electric grid, vehicles—including autonomous vehicles—and household appliances are improving efficiency, energy conservation, and convenience. However, security industry analysts have demonstrated that many of these new systems can threaten data privacy, data integrity, or continuity of services. In the future, intelligence services might use the loT for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials," Clapper said (PDF), according to his prepared testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

During his live appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Clapper testified that "unpredictable instabilities have become the new normal and this trend will continue for the unforeseeable future." He said that infectious diseases like Zika, government instability, and the 60 million displaced people across the globe are adding to the world's instability. But there's more. "Extreme weather, climate change, environmental degradation, rising demand for food and water, poor policy decisions and inadequate infrastructure will magnify this instability," he said.

But "technological innovation," he added, "will have an even more significant impact on our way of life.

"This innovation is central to our economic prosperity but it will bring new security vulnerabilities. The Internet of Things will connect tens of billions of new physical devices that could be exploited. Artificial intelligence will enable computers to make autonomous decisions about data and physical systems, and potentially disrupt labor markets," Clapper told the Armed Services Committee.

Clapper's remarks on the Internet of Things are remarkable because they come from the nation's top spy chief, and they likely mean that US spy agencies are trying to exploit it. Two weeks ago, a Berkman Center for Internet & Society report from Harvard University concluded that "If the Internet of Things has as much impact as is predicted, the future will be even more laden with sensors that can be commandeered for law enforcement surveillance; and this is a world far apart from one in which opportunities for surveillance have gone dark. It is vital to appreciate these trends and to make thoughtful decisions about how pervasively open to surveillance we think our built environments should be—by home and foreign governments, and by the companies who offer the products that are transforming our personal spaces ." (PDF)

As noted by Trevor Timm, the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the importance of Clapper's IoT statements must be considered against the backdrop of the increasing proliferation of Internet-connected devices, from refrigerators to cars.

Privacy advocates have known about the potential for government to exploit the Internet of things for years. Law enforcement agencies have taken notice too, increasingly serving court orders on companies for data they keep that citizens might not even know they are transmitting. Police have already been asking Google-owned company Dropcam for footage from cameras inside people’s homes meant to keep an eye on their kids. Fitbit data has already been used in court against defendants multiple times. But the potential for these privacy violations has only recently started reaching millions of homes: Samsung sparked controversy last year after announcing a television that would listen to everything said in the room it’s in and in the fine print literally warned people not to talk about sensitive information in front of it.

And let's not forget about the security vulnerabilities of these connected devices, too. That makes it easy for both hackers and the authorities to prey upon the public. Consider Shodan, the search engine for vulnerable webcams recently featured here at Ars. "The feed includes images of marijuana plantations, back rooms of banks, children, kitchens, living rooms, garages, front gardens, back gardens, ski slopes, swimming pools, colleges and schools, laboratories, and cash register cameras in retail stores."

All of which seemingly renders the government's push for crypto backdoors a sideshow.