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El Reg reports
The US Federal Trade Commission is holding off regulating the Internet of Things industry until there is an event which "harms consumers right now", according to its acting head.
Maureen Ohlhausen, the American regulator's acting head, told a gathering of cyber security professionals that she was not inclined to impose mandatory regulations on IoT devices.
"We haven't taken a position", she said, according to The Guardian.
"We're saying not 'Let's speculate about harm five years out', but 'Is there something happening that harms consumers right now or is likely to cause harm to consumers'", she added. The British newspaper contrasted her position with the Dyn cyberattack last October, when millions of hacked IoT devices crapflooded Dyn's widely used DNS servers and knocked many big websites offline, including Reddit, Netflix, and Github.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by driven on Friday March 17 2017, @02:07PM (1 child)
Once enough damage has been done to get the lawmaker's attention, what makes them so sure they can _undo_ the damage? There will probably be hundreds of millions of IoT devices out in the wild by then. Surely there are at least one or two statements they can make to protect consumers just a little bit. Even in the Wild West, certain things were illegal.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday March 17 2017, @07:38PM
Why would you protect customers beforehand, adding development costs, when profit growth requires you to sell them a new safer thermostat every other year?