The Internet of Risky Things

Chapter 8. Laws, Society, and Things

The IoT crosses many boundaries (cultural, jurisdictional, and national); laws and management of the IoT will also need to cross these boundaries.

Law¹ is undeniably another large force in shaping how things happen in this world. The IoT traverses not only geographical lines separating governmental jurisdictions, but also domains of life previously covered by separate customs. This boundary crossing leads to interesting interactions between the IoT and law, and this chapter surveys some of the principal ones:

• The use of smart technology to hide from the law

• The use of law to keep smart technology from being scrutinized

• How the IoT introduces new things, neither fish nor fowl, that create challenges for what legal framework they should inherit

When Technology Evades Law

In theory, law governs behavior by sanctioning behaviors deemed to be sufficiently bad for the social contract. However, in the IoC and IoT, we have already seen scenarios where the behavior of smart technology has somehow sidestepped this governance. Let’s consider a few.

Case Study: VW Emissions

In the Garden of Eden story from Genesis, eating from the Tree of Knowledge enables human to sin. A cynic might predict that in the IoT story, making things smart will enable them to sin: to use the adaptiveness and resourcefulness of computing to do objectively bad things, such as deceptively cheat. Unfortunately, this has already happened.

Powering internal combustion engines ...