Tag Archives: Internet of Things

EU Commission’s leaked plan for the data economy: new rules for IoT liability and sharing “non-personal data”

Posted on December 15, 2016 | Leave a comment

It seems that it’s the season of EU leaks on internet and digital policy. One day after the draft new e-Privacy regulation was leaked (to Politico), another document appeared online (published by Euractiv) before its adoption and release – a Communication from the European Commission on “Building a European data economy”.

It announces at least two revisions of existing legal acts: the Database Copyright Directive (96/9) and the Product Liability Directive (85/374). New legislative measures may also be needed to achieve the objectives announced in the draft Communication. However, the Commission is not clear about this and leaves a lot of the decision-making for after the results of wide stakeholder and public consultations are processed.

The common thread of most of the policy areas covered by the Communication is “non-personal data”. The Commission starts from the premise that while the GDPR allows for the free movement of personal data within the EU, there are currently no common rules among Member States for sharing, accessing, transferring “non-personal data”. Moreover, the Commission notes that the number of national measures for data localisation is growing.

“The issue of the free movement of data concerns all types of data: enterprises and actors in the data economy deal with a mixture of personal and non-personal data, machine generated or created by individuals, and data flows and data sets regularly combine these different types of data”, according to the draft Communication.

And what is truly challenging is that “enterprises and actors in the data economy will be dealing with a mixture of personal and non-personal data; data flows and datasets will regularly combine both. Any policy measure must take account of this economic reality”.

If you are wondering what is meant by “non-personal data”, the draft Communication provides some guidance to understand what it refers to. For instance, the draft Communication mentions that “personal data can be turned into non-personal data through the process of anonymisation” and that “the bulk of machine-generated data are not personal data”. Therefore, anonymisation and de-identification techniques will gain even more importance.

While the GDPR covers how personal data are used in the EU, the proposals that will be made on the basis of this Communication envisage the use of all the other data.

So what does the Commission propose?

Several objectives are announced, most of them dealing with the free flow of and access to “non-personal data”, while another objective looks at reforming liability rules to accommodate algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things.

Free flow of and access to non-personal data

  • According to the draft Communication, any Member State action affecting data storage or processing should be guided by a ‘principle of free movement of data within the EU’.
  • Broader use of open, well-documented Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) could be considered, through technical guidance, including identification and spreading of best practice for companies and public sector bodies.
  • The Commission could issue guidance based on the Trade Secrets Directive, copyright legislation and the Database Directive on how data control rights should be addressed in contracts. The Commission intends to launch the review of the Database Directive in 2017.
  • Access for public interest purposes – public authorities could be granted access to data where this would be in the general interest and would considerably improve the functioning of the public sector, for example access for statistical offices to business data or the optimization of traffic management systems on the basis of real-time data from private vehicles.
  • Selling and acquiring databases could be regulated. “Access against remuneration”: a framework based on fair, non-discriminatory terms could be developed for data holders, such as manufacturers, service providers or other parties, to provide access to the data they hold against remuneration. The Communication is not clear whether this proposal could also cover personal data. In any case, on several occasions throughout the draft Communication, it is mentioned or implied that the GDPR takes precedence over any new rules that would impact the protection of personal data.
  • A data producer’s right to use and licence the use of data could be introduced; by “data producer”, COM understands “the owner or long-term user of the device”. This approach would “open the possibility for users to exploit their data and thereby contribute to unlocking machine-generated data”.
  • Developing further rights to data portability (building on the GDPR data portability right and on the proposed rules on contract for the supply of digital content, further rights to portability of non-personal data could be introduced). The initiatives for data portability would be accompanied by sector specific experiments on standards (which would involve a multi-stakeholder collaboration including standard setters, industry, the technical community, and public authorities).

Rethinking liability rules for the IoT and AI era

Even though Artificial Intelligence is not mentioned as such in the draft Communication, it is clear that the scenario of algorithms making decisions is also envisaged by the announced objective to reform product liability rules, alongside IoT. As the draft Communication recalls, currently, the Products Liability Directive establishes the principle of strict liability, i.e. liability without fault: where a defective product causes damage to a consumer, the manufacturers may be liable even without negligence or fault on their part. The current rules are only addressed to the producer, always require a defect and that the causality between the defect and the damage has to be proven.

The Commission proposed two approaches, which will be subject to consultation:

  • “Risk-generating or risk-management approaches: liability would be assigned to the market players generating a major risk for others and benefitting from the relevant device, product or service or to those which are best placed to minimize or avoid the realization of the risk.”
  • “Voluntary or mandatory insurance schemes: they would compensate the parties who suffered the damage; this approach would need to provide legal protection to investments made by business while reassuring victims regarding fair compensation or appropriate insurance in case of damage.”

“Connected and automated driving” – used as test case

The Commission intends to test all the proposed legal solutions, after engaging in wide consultations, in a real life scenario and proposes “connected and automated driving” as the test case.

Finally, read all of these objectives and proposals having in mind that they come from a draft document that was leaked to Euractiv. It is possible that by the time of adoption and publication of this Communication (and there is no indication as to when it will be officially published) its content will be altered.

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Main points from FTC’s Internet of Things Report

Posted on January 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

FTC published on 27 January a Report on the Internet of Things, based on the conclusions of a workshop organised in November with representatives of industry, consumers and academia.

It is apparent from the Report that the most important issue to be tackled by  the industry is data security – it represents also the most important risk to consumers.

While data security enjoys the most attention in the Report and the bigger part of the recommendations for best practices, data minimisation and notice and choice are considered to remain relevant and important in the IoT environment. FTC even provides a list of practical options for the industry to provide notice and choice, admitting that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

The most welcomed recommendation in the report (at least, by this particular reader) was the one referring to the need of general data security and data privacy legislation – and not such legislation especially tailored for IoT. FTC called the Congress to act on these two topics.

Here is a brief summary of the Report:

The IoT definition from FTC’s point of view

Everyone in the field knows there is no generally accepted definition of what IoT is. It is therefore helpful to know what FTC considers IoT to be for its own activity:

“things” such as devices or sensors – other than computers, smartphones, or tablets – that connect, communicate or transmit information with or between each other through the Internet.

In addition, FTC clarified that, consistent with their mission to protect consumers in the commercial sphere, their discussion of IoT is limited to such devices that are sold to or used by consumers.

Stunning facts and numbers

  • as of this year, there will be 25 billion connected devices worldwide;
  • fewer than 10,000 households using one company’s IoT home automation product can “generate 150 million discrete data points a day” or approximately one data point every six seconds for each household.

Data security, the elephant in the house

Most of the recommendations for best practices that FTC made are about ensuring data security. According to the Report, companies:

  • should implement “security by design” by building security into their devices at the outset, rather than as an afterthought;
  • must ensure that their personnel practices promote good security; as part of their personnel practices, companies should ensure that product security is addressed at the appropriate level of responsibility within the organization;
  • must work to ensure that they retain service providers that are capable of maintaining reasonable security, and provide reasonable oversight to ensure that those service providers do so;
  • should implement a defense-in-depth approach, where security measures are considered at several levels; (…) FTC staff encourages companies to take additional steps to secure information passed over consumers’ home networks;
  • should consider implementing reasonable access control measures to limit the ability of an unauthorized person to access a consumer’s device, data, or even the consumer’s network;
  • should continue to monitor products throughout the life cycle and, to the extent feasible, patch known vulnerabilities.

Attention to de-identification! 

In the IoT ecosystem, data minimization is challenging, but it remains important.

  • Companies should examine their data practices and business needs and develop policies and practices that impose reasonable limits on the collection and retention of consumer data.
  • To the extent that companies decide they need to collect and maintain data to satisfy a business purpose, they should also consider whether they can do so while maintaining data in deidentified form.

When a company states that it maintains de-identified or anonymous data, the Commission has stated that companies should

  1. take reasonable steps to de-identify the data, including by keeping up with technological developments;
  2. publicly commit not to re-identify the data; and
  3. have enforceable contracts in place with any third parties with whom they share the data, requiring the third parties to commit not to re-identify the data.

Notice and choice – difficult in practice, but still relevant

While the traditional methods of providing consumers with disclosures and choices may need to be modified as new business models continue to emerge, (FTC) staff believes that providing notice and choice remains important, as potential privacy and security risks may be heightened due to the pervasiveness of data collection inherent in the IoT. Notice and choice is particularly important when sensitive data is collected.

  • Staff believes that providing consumers with the ability to make informed choices remains practicable in the IoT;
  • Staff acknowledges the practical difficulty of providing choice when there is no consumer interface, and recognizes that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Some options are enumerated in the report – several of which were discussed by workshop participants: choices at point of sale, tutorials, codes on the device, choices during set-up.

No need for IoT specific legislation, but general data security and data privacy legislation much needed

  • Staff does not believe that the privacy and security risks, though real, need to be addressed through IoT-specific legislation at this time;
  • However, while IoT specific-legislation is not needed, the workshop provided further evidence that Congress should enact general data security legislation;
  • General technology-neutral data security legislation should protect against unauthorized access to both personal information and device functionality itself;
  • General privacy legislation that provides for greater transparency and choices could help both consumers and businesses by promoting trust in the burgeoning IoT marketplace; In addition, as demonstrated at the workshop, general privacy legislation could ensure that consumers’ data is protected, regardless of who is asking for it.

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