Florida Senator Bill Nelson expressed his concern that “Big Brother may really be listening…recently, we learned that Samsung’s privacy policy for its voice-activated ‘Smart TV’ informed consumers that their indoor conversations can be recorded by the television and sent to a third party,…” during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation on February 11, 2015.
Justin Brookman , the Director of Consumer Privacy Project at Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) testified that “the very nature of some devices (such as health wearables) is to track a user’s data for that user’s benefit — certain data practices seriously threaten individuals’ security and right to privacy.” Here are the broad topics covered by Mr. Brookma
- The transformative potential of the Internet of Things
- There are currently insufficient security protections in place to regulate IoT data collection.
- Sensitive personal data may be collected contrary to consumer wishes and expectation
- Device connectivity and intelligence could diminish user autonomy over the devices they bu
- Our government access and intelligence laws must be reformed
Of course with all the news about IoT there were no surprises at the hearing.