Disadvantages Of Smart Dust

Like every other technology, this one has its disadvantages too. A lot of organizations are concerned about their privacy and security as such a technology makes it very easy to invade the privacy of any other organization. People in their homes will feel insecure with the knowledge that they can be so easily monitored. Not only at organizational level, it is indeed a threat at the military levels too where obtaining top-secret information of enemy countries would become much too straightforward. Secondly, Smart Dust is very difficult to retrieve once it has been deployed as these are very tiny particles. If they fail, they also pose threat to the environment as they are made up of environmentally unfriendly components. One potential problem arises if companies use Smart Dust that draws on radioactive source of energy. Although researchers claim that this does not have any harmful effects (unless burnt and inhaled the smoke or ate the battery) but employees may refuse to work in such an environment as they feel threatened. Smart Dust may help ease human work but can also lead to problems of unemployment as they take over many human tasks.

Reference:
http://www.uhisrc.com/FTB/Smart%20Dust/Smart%20Dust.pdf
http://www.e-core.org.uk/content/smart_dust/smart.htm