IoT Industry Leaders Request More Spectrum Availability, Suggest Limited Legislative Approach to Privacy Enforcement
Automotive and technology trade association leaders backed allocating more government spectrum for IoT purposes and for Congress to exercise restraint in drafting or passing legislation on the enforcement of privacy restrictions, in testimony before the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet Wednesday. The four witnesses agreed there should be a national consensus on what information collected or monitored by IoT devices should and shouldn't be protected and that companies should give notice of the sharing of any information, and that the FTC is providing sufficient oversight in this area by working on a case-by-case basis, so congressional intervention isn't immediately needed.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
"To me, what's most important is to let [the current oversight situation] happen," CEA CEO Gary Shapiro said. "We need to let it play out a little bit and if you were going to legislate, it needs to be very specific and narrow and address a real problem." Shapiro said IoT providers should be obligated to be transparent about what privacy they provide, and that it's "premature" for Congress to draw a hard line on exactly what information should and shouldn't be shared. Shapiro also warned of a potential trade-off between privacy and innovation: "If you put too much of a line around privacy, you're trading off opportunities for new services."
"Innovation should be embraced and seen as a solution and not as a problem," said Mitch Bainwol, Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers CEO. "[The] pace of innovation far outstrips the pace of regulation." The key, Bainwol said, is to strike a balance between innovation and safety, and that interoperability matters, but so does system integrity. Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) CEO Dean Garfield praised the FTC's current industry oversight, saying significant investment in the IoT field is being made to ensure data privacy. Garfield also joined Shapiro in requesting additional spectrum. "There is a significant opportunity to more efficiently use spectrum and make more of it available," he said.
Morgan Reed, ACT-App Association executive director, told the subcommittee that global IoT marketplace competitiveness is being harmed by the U.S. government's current access to data shared or collected by IoT devices and companies. Reed said legislative steps need to be taken to ensure the government no longer has indefinite access to specific consumer data from IoT devices, such as personal health data. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, said Congress needs to protect privacy rights to set the expectation of privacy for individuals who have shared IoT-related information with different entities. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga, also said more structure on information privacy issues raised by IoT devices is needed. "Privacy is an issue that should unite us, not drive us apart," Johnson said. "It's time we have some rules of the road."