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September 22, 2016
September 22, 2016
Category Archives: IoT
The Internet of Things Has No Clothes – A Defcon 23 Summary
I spent last weekend at Defcon 23, the annual hackerpalooza in Las Vegas. As usual, the experience was good for quickly disabusing people like me of the comfortable fiction that any digital information is truly secure. In five simultaneous tracks over three days and multiple ongoing “villages,” computer-savvy technophiles demonstrated their ability to gain unintended […]
The Internet of Things That Eavesdrop and Invade Privacy
A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit shed light on theories plaintiffs will use in privacy litigation against owners of Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices. Already known in the legal blogosphere as “the butt dialing case,” the court’s July 21, 2015 opinion in Huff v. Spaw considered federal […]
Top 5 Legal Issues in the Internet of Things, Part 5: Physical Safety
In this series of articles on the Internet of Things, we’ve examined two ways in which IoT devices can be intentionally abused (data security, invasion of privacy), and two systemic limitations that could impede the IoT’s growth (bandwidth overload and lack of interoperability between copyrighted software). The final topic I will address in this series–physical […]
Top 5 Legal Issues in the Internet of Things, Part 4: Copyright
Imagine a world in which each box of Lego® bricks you buy is a standalone toy–unable to combine with the bricks from any other set. That, of course, is the opposite of the real world. As was brilliantly depicted in 2014’s Lego Movie, actual kids exercise their creativity by combining the bricks from every set […]
Top 5 Legal Issues in the Internet of Things, Part 3: Bandwidth
Over the past two weeks. I’ve written about the privacy implications of the Internet of Things (IoT), with respect to both data security and surreptitious collection of information. Today we consider a more mundane, but no less practical, aspect of the IoT explosion: bandwidth. Consider this: Cisco IBSG predicts there will be 25 billion devices connected to the […]
Top 5 Legal Issues in the Internet of Things, Part 2: Data Collection and Invasion of Privacy
Last week I wrote about the incredibly lax privacy protections used in most Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and how vulnerable they are to hacking. Users are allowing more and more of their health, commercial, and other data to be stored in IoT devices, and the potential of the data being hacked into and misused is ever-present. A closely related, […]
Top 5 Legal Issues in the Internet of Things, Part 1: Data Security & Privacy
“The Internet of Things” (or IoT) is an increasingly popular shorthand term for the emerging arrangement of physical devices (other than what we’d typically think of as “computers”) that come equipped with wireless internet connectivity. Examples include smart thermostats, smart doorbells, smart refrigerators, smart cars–pretty much anything that marketers feel the need to insert the prefix “smart” in […]
Skeletons of Empires: A Scenario for AR in 2020 [Video]
Earlier today, I participated in an online panel discussion sponsored by IEEE called “Skeletons of Empires: A Scenario for AR in 2020.” This was part of IEEE’s series of discussions on the various possible ways in which augmented reality and related technologies (especially the mesh of interconnected sensors known as the Internet of Things) could be […]
Wearable Devices as Copyright Enforcement Tools
What if, instead of being a copyright infringement threat, wearable technology became copyright’s ultimate enforcement tool? Copyright enforcement will be a major challenge in the medium of augmented reality. The mass lawsuits of the past two decades against file-sharers and signal pirates have required a significant amount of detective work and discovery to connect individual […]
Privacy regulators across the globe are beginning to realize what the industry has known for a long time: IoT devices are woefully insecure. It can only be a matter of time before enforcement agencies introduce tough new requirements for data security and disclosures. Companies that fail to anticipate these developments will find themselves at a sever disadvantage.