The Thing of the Future: Challenges Posed by Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a computing concept where the devices around us, referred to as objects, will be connected to the Internet and will be able to communicate over the net.

This requires the things around us to be equipped with minuscule identifying devices which communicates over the internet. The intelligent cars will drive by themselves.The fridge could communicate to the grocery store. With everything having a sensor and an identifying device, the location of a thing can always be identified.  Theft as we know will be a thing of the past as the product location is known at all times.

If you think this is futuristic, look around, there are elements of IoT, already in our midst. My son has a toy helicopter which is controlled by an app on the mobile or iPad. Technically the helicopter has sensor and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device) tag. A small RF device is attached to the iPad/mobile, and the helicopter works to the command from iPad/mobile. It relays and stores data about its flight on iPad. And, it is not an expensive toy!

The fact is that we have already passed the first wave of IoT, without even bothering about it. The first wave was the advent of barcodes and Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags. This helped inventory management, tracking and basic identification. It enabled us to track our packets on our mobiles as they were on the move through courier operators. The second or the current wave is based on connecting sensors, objects, devices, data and applications. European Commission’s Digital Agenda For Europe predicts that the next wave could be called a “cognitive IoT” when systems around us acquire intelligence on its own to take autonomous decisions.

The Economist reported recently that many objects, including mundane things like light bulbs and door locks, are being hooked up to the internet by putting tiny chips (computers) into them and adding wireless connectivity.

Autonomous cars are being tested by all leading manufacturers. Mercedes has announced that its truck division has successfully tested an autonomous semi truck on the Autobahn in Germany. It predicted the future truck is a Mercedes-Benz that drives itself. With Future Truck 2025 project, they are seeing a market and dollar signs.

When dollar drives, technology moves fast.

Far Reaching Impact

With IoT, the physical world around us itself will be transformed into an information system.

 IoT digitizes the physical world around us by sending instantaneous information about themselves. The objects could communicate with the surroundings objects through the internet.  The object exchanges information about itself to its database, sends information about surroundings as well as receive information from the surrounding. This throws up massive amounts of data about the physical world surrounding us. The data is analysed by computer systems which enable them to take further decisions about themselves and the environment.

The significance of this cannot be understated. Human beings perceive others and the rest of the world in terms of the data that they have assimilated about such things over a period of time. IoT enables the machines to possess or access data about data of their surroundings. Objects will give out the data identifying themselves. So a machine may not just be a machine as perceived by you, it will be perceived by other machines as well.

Privacy, did you say?

Privacy? Wasn’t it a 20^th century concept?!!

Scott McNealy who was co-founder and CEO of Sun Microsystems was quoted in 1999 as saying ‘privacy is dead, get over it’. This was much before the Facebook and Twitter where we share our personal information and thoughts in most cavalier ways we couldn’t have imagined some 20 years back. This prompted Mark Zuckerberg to say: People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people

IoT will take it to the next level. One thing that physical objects do not need is privacy.

When you are surrounded by such connected objects, almost all information about your lifestyle will be available as transmitted by the objects. Every movement of yours could be recorded somewhere. This might include tiny cameras in your daily medical capsules that send images as it moves down your gut!

In the age of the Things, you are denuded of privacy! Just get over it…

There are some efforts to protect personal privacy through new laws. Economist reported that US, Britain, Germany and others are planning laws to prevent unwanted photographs to be published (revenge porn). Israel has already implemented such a law. The development of such jurisprudences might have  a bearing on how privacy concepts work out in IoT.

Whose Data is It?

A huge amount of data will be reported by devices. Such the data relating to individual behavior and preferences has immense commercial potential. It would almost be a marketers dream ; and a privacy lawyers nightmare.

Who should own this data and who should have access to the data relating to your online behavior? These would be interesting questions that will  have to be resolved in IoT world. Some may argue that the data should belong to the person whose actions have caused it to be generated. Such a view may not have legal backing based on the current legal jurisprudence.

Even today, we have ceded a bit of the authority over our own data to Facebook and Google. They are targeting advertisements on us based on the data generated by our online behavior. If we have already acquiesced with such actions these corporations for years, what right we will have to challenge anyone from using the data generated by our behavior as sensed by IoT.  

Copyright Law in the IoT era

The massive data that IoT throws up will land in huge databases. The legal system that currently deal with ownership of data is the Copyright Law, though there are some sui generis protection given to databases in some jurisdictions. Copyright does not protect information per se.  Much of the data will be information.  Mere collection of data does not entitle copyright protection. Copyright protects original works.  Unless there is conscious value addition to the data, which qualifies it to be original, a database does not enjoy legal protection under copyright law.

Here is what the TRIPS Agreement mandates on databases:

Article 10 (2): ‘Compilations of data or other material, whether in machine readable or other form. Which be the reason of selection or arrangement of their contents constitute intellectual creations shall be protected as such. Such protection which shall not extend to data or material itself…’

So the huge amount of data that gets thrown up may not get protection unless by reason of selection or arrangement of their contents constitute intellectual creations (original work). The protection of databases which do not meet this standard will be an issue in IoT era.

On more interesting copyright issue emerges.

Copyright law centers around the concept of author and the ‘work’ created by the author. What if there is no human author? In the case of computer programs, the Indian Copyright law takes care of this by defining author as ‘the person who causes the work to be created’. The person thus need not be a human being and could even be an artificial juridical entity like a company. The work for hire and contract of service conditions do address the issue of employee generated work, including data.

In IoT much of data is generated by inanimate objects which gets served in some cloud owned by a third party, using applications of yet another.

Back in 2003, I had written a ‘light’ piece on this issue of authorship without human interface, in the context of spirit directed writings titled, ‘Copyright: The Otherworldly Kind’. I had discussed some of the likelyhood of artificial intelligence created works. To quote:

“When in future artificial intelligence becomes a reality, the concept of author is likely to move away further from its human origins. Artificial intelligence may create works far removed from human hands that it may tend nearer to the creations of the otherworld! When sophisticated computers of future start generating works on their own, law may be groping into the sphere of paranormal. The legal concept of authorship this will face challenges in future…”

In the wake of advent of Internet, WIPO had convened a diplomatic conference to address the challenges posed by digitization and instantaneous communication through the web. It concluded WIPO treaties which took care of the so called digital issues. There was a proposal to conclude a database treaty, which was not taken up. IoT may demand another diplomatic conference to look at the issues relating to databases.

Copyright law emerged as technologies emerged addressing the issues posed by such technologies on authors rights. IoT may be giving us a wake up call on copyright law.

Big Data  

The rise in web traffic and the storage challenge of the data led to the development of Cloud based solutions. IoT will throw up more data and demand more web traffic. It is going to geometrically multiply the storage and traffic devices. Cisco estimates that about 50 billion devices will be connected by 2020, just in six years time. Compare this with 2012 when there were 8.7 billion connected objects globally, constituting 0.6% of the ‘things' in the world. In 2013, this number was exceeding 10.0 billion. Driven by reducing price per connection and the consequent rapid growth in the number of machine-to-machine (M2M) connections, Cisco expect the number of connected objects to reach 50bn by 2020 (2.7% of things in the world). The management of these platforms is a challenge that network majors are preparing.

Analysing the mammoth data itself will be a challenge; a challenge whose dimensions we may only be beginning to understand.

Security Issues: Antivirus in my Body?

This poses a new challenge. The devices require a software program to run it. If you have a software, by now we know that a virus will not be far away. So we all use antivirus softwares. The problem is that these computers do not have enough processing power to handle antivirus or anti-hacking securities prompting security experts to sound warning alarm.

So may be instead of your door being broken open, it will just be hacked!

And what about a capsule you may swallow for targeted action of a programmed nanomolecule in your body?  What if there is a virus in it, or worse, could be hacked?

Open Standards

It is important that the development of IoT is based on open standards. If billions of devices are to be connected and be interoperable, it cannot be done, if we do not have open standards that could be followed by anyone across the globe. IEEE has started work on global standards by setting up IEEE Standards Association.

IEEE has taken the lead in setting standards through global collaborations. One such IoT-related standard, IEEE 1888, was started in China by companies, universities, and other organizations that wanted to reduce  energy consumption of commercial buildings.  IEEE 1888 Standard for Ubiquitous Green Community Control Network Protocol relates to management of energy use of large commercial buildings with the use of sensors and surveillance monitors to use less energy.

PC World reported that hardware majors like Intel, Samsung and Dell are among the founding members of Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC), which later this year will deliver the first of many specifications for hassle-free data flow between devices, regardless of the OS, device type or wireless communication technology.

Open Source Software

Interconnection of devices and their interoperability require open source software. Consortias of industry are working to develop such open source softwares. The Open Internet Consortium are expected to contribute open-source code so developers can write common software stacks for communications and notifications across handsets, remote controls, wearables, appliances and other sensor devices. Microsoft has joined the AllSeen Alliance, which is building an open source framework for connecting homes, cars and mobile devices.

When Microsoft joins open source, there must really be something in it!

Autonomous Decisions:

The European Commission’s Digital Agenda For Europe predicts that the third or the next wave could be a “cognitive IoT”. This next wave of IoT will ride on hyper-connectivity, interoperability solutions and semantic enriched information with rich interfaces.

This semantic information layer may generate intelligence at different levels, in the objects, devices, network(s), systems and in the applications for suo motu evidence based decision making and priority setting by them. The McKinsey report says that this kind of machine decision making mimics human reactions, though at vastly enhanced performance levels.

IoT will bring hyper-connectivity to a global society, using augmented and rich interfaces to a society characterised by a higher semi-autonomous system behavior than today.

If decisions are taken by autonomous systems, what about the consequences of the same. A decision could lead to a series of event which could have consequence on many actors. If any of the actors face a legal injury, what about the legal liability of bad decisions? A man or a woman and not the machines will have face the judge and the jury. Where will the buck stop?

The Race Has Begun

IoT will dawn upon us even before we realise. There are challenges. But there is already a race to be ahead in the game. The following is an excerpt from an article, ‘The Age of The Internet of Things is upon Us’ by Dan Frost

I’m working on an IoT product at the moment, and the key is time to market. The technologies have all matured around the same time, and consumers are more open to what they can provide. Getting our product out there matters, and if that means saving a few weeks here and there by using a platform to bootstrap ourselves to market, that’s what we’re going to do.

However, although the underlying technologies are mature, the product market is not mature. We are still learning how to fit this into peoples’ lives and into existing businesses. Expect rapid development of such platforms as features such as security are improved.

China is on the forefront of development of IoT. It has set up a smart city WuXi at Jiangsu, based on IoT. China sees IoT as a new engine for economic growth and an opportunity to catch up with the developed countries. WuXi has established itself at the center of IoT with several research institutes, including Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT), with strong support from Chinese government. 

There are several challenges, technological and legal, but the IoT era or the Era of Things is here.

The race is on…but are you in it?