Author Archives: Taylor Armerding

The Internet of Things (IoT) is disrupting just about every industry. But it may get disrupted itself as the nation’s legal and regulatory system slowly catches up with the massive security and privacy risks it creates.

Not anytime soon, however. “Work in progress” was the operative phrase at a panel session at this week’s RSA conference titled, “Flaming toasters to crashing cars – the Internet of Things and mass liability.”

Most of the problem with establishing legal liability surrounding the IoT is that while its growth is regularly called “explosive,” there is a lot more, and bigger, exploding yet to come.

The number of connected things is expected to expand so exponentially that one of the panelists, Jay Brudz, an attorney at Drinker Biddle & Reath, declared that “Internet of Things” is already a “dumb phrase. In years to come, it’s going to be everything but computers with a human interface, so it’s just going to be the Internet,” he said.

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A regular refrain within the online security community is that privacy is dead.

David Adler’s talk at RSA Tuesday, titled “Where you are is who you are: Legal trends in geolocation privacy and security,” was about one of the major reasons it is so, so dead.

To paraphrase Adler, founder of the Adler Law Group, it is not so much that in today’s connected world there is a single, malevolent Big Brother watching you. It’s that there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of “little brothers” eagerly watching you so they can sell you stuff more effectively. Collectively, they add up to an increasingly omniscient big brother.

“Everything is gathering location data – apps, mobile devices and platforms that you use,” he said. “Often it is being done without your knowledge or consent.

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