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posted by martyb on Thursday March 29 2018, @04:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the Protecting-the-product-or-the-public? dept.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is conducting a public hearing on the safety of internet-connected consumer products, and is requesting comments.

The Commission hearing will begin at 10 a.m., on May 16, 2018, and will conclude the same day. The Commission hearing will also be available through a webcast, but viewers will not be able to interact with the panels and presenters through the webcast.
...
The growth of IoT-related products is a challenge for all CPSC stakeholders to address. Regulators, standards organizations, and business and consumer advocates must work collaboratively to develop a framework for best practices. To that end, the Commission will hold a public hearing for all interested parties on consumer product safety issues related to IoT.

Although this explicitly does not cover data security and privacy it covers many of the other issues seen with IoT devices.

Comments can be submitted to the commission through the web portal:

You may submit written comments, identified by Docket No. CPSC-2018-0007
...
Electronic Submissions: Submit electronic comments to the Federal eRulemaking Portal at: www.regulations.gov. Follow the instructions for submitting comments.

Seen through the Internet Of Shit twitter feed.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 29 2018, @07:25PM (18 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday March 29 2018, @07:25PM (#660146) Journal

    This is what happens when everything is built cutting cost, when people sacrifice security for convenience, and when people are frankly too dumb to comprehend 1/10th of what they're using. I said it when these devices first started appearing: it's going to be like a really crappy real-life version of Rockman NT Warrior, only without useful NetNavis to go virus hunting with...

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    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
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  • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @07:33PM (13 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @07:33PM (#660154)

    That's what happens when there isn't clear ownership of the resources in question.

    No clear rights, and no clear responsibility.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 29 2018, @07:52PM (12 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday March 29 2018, @07:52PM (#660166) Journal

      You again. No, you frothing fanatic, this isn't about ownership, this is about knowledge. In fact, it's the *excesses* of our current crony capitalist system, regulatory capture, and lack of *proper* regulation, that allowed this situation to arise in the first place. God, you're tiresome...

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @08:41PM (11 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @08:41PM (#660184)

        In fact, Cronyism is an example of why centralized ownership via the State is a bad idea; maybe we should instead try "private" ownership among The People.

        So, it's entirely about ownership.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @08:58PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @08:58PM (#660191)

          What about the obtuse mixture of “private” and “of the people” that doesn’t mix don’t you get?

          God I hope you aren’t a chemist.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @09:00PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @09:00PM (#660194)

          Because that, like, totally, wouldn't happen in a system of contracts.

          But I will admit that clearer ownership would help out. If I get an IoT I don't have root access to, then it should be in the purchase agreement that the vendor owns it. I also think that the owner (me if I have root, the vendor if they have root and I don't) should be responsible for abuse originating from the device. Additionally, if the abuse from the device came from somebody else abusing the device (a hacker), that's an additional abuse of property the hacker doesn't own.

          How does the system of contracts handle random vandals and trespassers anyway?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @10:33PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @10:33PM (#660223)

            Clearly, the fact that you ask that question implies that it would be an obvious matter for such a contract to address.

            I can imagine these being simple version of your cases:

            • If the service provider owns the device: You are responsible for securing "physical" access to it; a network hack would not be considered "physical" if it does not require an attack to handle the device, etc.

            • If you own the device outright, then you are responsible for whatever it does, regardless of who manipulates the device to do nefarious things. Of course, that doesn't prevent you from being able to track down the attacker in order to extract compensation, and it doesn't prevent you and the service provider from agreeing that the service provider may take on that responsibility of tracking down an attacker and thereby extracting compensation directly (as happens, say, with automobile insurance).

            Speaking of insurance, you can see that what we have here is a problem of risk management; well, managing risk is what the whole business of insurance is supposed to be about, and I can imagine a rich ecosystem of insurance (possibly provided by the service provider) which ultimately creates the incentives for people and their organizations to secure themselves from problems.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @11:51PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @11:51PM (#660237)

              Ah, ok. Insurance I think is the piece I was missing.

        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 29 2018, @09:03PM (6 children)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday March 29 2018, @09:03PM (#660195) Journal

          What you don't seem to get is that centralization of power *anywhere* will lead to this. Your fatal flaw is your inability--or dogmatic unwillingness--to understand that the problem is not government, or the people, but human nature itself. Besides which, in your libertarian utopia, whatever private individual or group accrued the most resources and power would become de facto "government," even if no such thing so named actually existed.

          You either don't or won't get this, and it makes everything you say somewhere between fact-free and actually spam, though I know better than to mod you that way even though you deserve it.

          Also, you never were able to answer this the last half dozen times or so I asked you: who, in your libertarian paradise, is responsible for enforcing contracts? And what happens when some private individual group accumulates enough capital to be able to say "fuck you, dipshits, we're going to do what we want and you can shove your contracts up your ass now?" If you don't see that your ideas will inevitably lead to a situation in which one and only one group or individual becomes "owner" of virtually everything, you're ignorant; if you do see it and think this should happen, you're evil.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @12:45AM (3 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @12:45AM (#660248)
            • You've been answered every time; you fail to read it.

            • Your alternative, "government", does not solve the problem; in fact, your "government" idea is, as you've noted, the failure mode of Capitalism (meaning it's necessary to fight to re-establish Capitalism).

            • Clearly, you'd agree that the key to averting Tyranny is a Separation of Powers.

              Well, the purest form of the Separation of Powers is competition according to Capitalism, where the rules of Capitalism are enforced by that very competition itself—it's an iterative process.

              You'll note that there is not and never has been (and never will be) One World Government; at the level of the nation state, there already is (and always has been) total anarchy. Even though all of these powers are explicitly anti-Capitalist, their competition has kept them under a global system of checks and balances (which has moved them ever more towards Capitalism, because that's the most profitable state of existence).

            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 30 2018, @02:07AM (2 children)

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday March 30 2018, @02:07AM (#660265) Journal

              We have very clearly seen that the rules of capitalism are indeed self-reinforcing and iterative...and that they tend to single or near-single ownership of *everything.* That *is* government. That you cannot or will not see this does not make it less true. You aren't thinking; you're just here to proselytize. At least get yourself an account, lest you make me start browsing at 1 or 2 rather than -1 so as not to see this idiocy any longer.

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              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @10:15AM (1 child)

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @10:15AM (#660327)

                If you end up with a government, then you are ending up with an organization that is not following Capitalism.

                • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 30 2018, @04:42PM

                  by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday March 30 2018, @04:42PM (#660429) Journal

                  So no one can enforce contracts then. You seem to think in your world no one would ever welch. How do people like you survive in the real world?

                  --
                  I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @05:14PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @05:14PM (#660442)

            smart contracts can enforce themselves.

            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 31 2018, @12:32AM

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday March 31 2018, @12:32AM (#660633) Journal

              Ahahahahahaha! ...oh wait, you're serious. Let me laugh harder: WAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You naive bastard, I am *so* glad you will never, ever, ever be in any position of power or policymaking. Do you also not look around you while crossing the street because "I've got the light, no one would dare run a red?"

              --
              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 29 2018, @08:07PM (3 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday March 29 2018, @08:07PM (#660177)

    Most of the IoT crap isn't about cutting cost, it's about aggregating big data in the cloud, capturing customer information for profit. So many systems that could be controlled via local network are not, but are instead relayed through central company servers to keep them in the loop and incidentally in control.

    Such devices are one way of judging a company or brand name, for instance: when(if) Nest thermostats function with >99.99% uptime over a period of 20+ years, that will be something of a selling point as compared to new upstart competitors. Flipside: Sony and their PS3 software updates, for my use profile, mean that every time I turn on my device (once every few months), I have to go through 30+ minutes of update before I can do what I wanted to do with it. Killing OtherOS without warning or willing compensation, yeah, that PS4 doesn't even look mildly tempting.

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    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @09:05PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @09:05PM (#660196)

      No, most of the IoT crap is because the packages are dirt cheap and brain dead easy to implement in something. Reporting back to the mothership is as much of convenience as anything else. You want to program in all the crap that your FPGA needs to do, or add it on later?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @01:25AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @01:25AM (#660258)

      Most All of the IoT crap isn't about cutting cost, it's about aggregating big data in the cloud, capturing customer information for profit. So many systems that could be controlled via local network are not, but are instead relayed through central company servers to keep them in the loop and incidentally in control.

      Ftfy.