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Jul 12 15 9:30 AM
When you pick up the phone, who you’re calling is none of the government’s business. The NSA’s domestic surveillance of phone metadata was the first program to be disclosed based on documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden, and Americans have been furious about it ever since. The courts ruled it illegal, and Congress let the section of the Patriot Act that justified it expire (though the program lives on in a different form as part of the USA Freedom Act). Yet XKEYSCORE, the secret program that converts all the data it can see into searchable events like web pages loaded, files downloaded, forms submitted, emails and attachments sent, porn videos watched, TV shows streamed, and advertisements loaded, demonstrates how Internet traffic can be even more sensitive than phone calls. And unlike the Patriot Act’s phone metadata program, Congress has failed to limit the scope of programs like XKEYSCORE, which is presumably still operating at full speed. Maybe Verizon stopped giving phone metadata to the NSA, but if a Verizon engineer uploads a spreadsheet full of this metadata without proper encryption, the NSA may well get it anyway by spying directly on the cables that the spreadsheet travels over. The outrage over bulk collection of our phone metadata makes sense: Metadata is private. Americans call suicide prevention hotlines, HIV testing services, phone sex services, advocacy groups for gun rights and for abortion rights, and the people they’re having affairs with. We use the phone to schedule job interviews without letting our current employer know, and to manage long-distance relationships. Most of us, at one point or another, have spent long hours on the phone discussing the most intimate details about our lives. There isn’t an American alive today who didn’t grow up with at least some access to a telephone, so Americans understand this well. But Americans don’t understand the Internet yet. Bulk collection of phone metadata is, without a doubt, a violation of your privacy, but bulk surveillance of Internet traffic is orders of magnitude more invasive. People also use the Internet in all the ways they use phones — often inadvertently sharing even more intimate details through online searches. In fact, the phone network itself is starting to go over the Internet, without customers even noticing. XKEYSCORE, as well as NSA’s programs that tap the Internet directly and feed data into it, have some legal problems: They violate First Amendment rights to freedom of association; they violate the Wiretap Act. But the biggest and most obvious concerns are with the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is short and concise: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. It means that Americans have a right to privacy. If government agents want to search you or seize your data, they must have a warrant. The warrant can only be issued if they have probable cause, and the warrant must be specific. It can’t say, “We want to seize everyone’s Internet traffic to see what’s in it.” Instead, it must say something like, “We want to seize a specific incriminating document from a specific suspect.” But this is exactly what’s happening: The government is indiscriminately seizing Internet traffic to see what’s in it, without probable cause. The ostensible justification is that, while tens of millions of Americans may be swept up in this dragnet, the real targets are foreigners. In a legal document called USSID 18, the NSA sets out policies and procedures that purportedly prevent unreasonable searches of data from U.S. persons.
When you pick up the phone, who you’re calling is none of the government’s business. The NSA’s domestic surveillance of phone metadata was the first program to be disclosed based on documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden, and Americans have been furious about it ever since. The courts ruled it illegal, and Congress let the section of the Patriot Act that justified it expire (though the program lives on in a different form as part of the USA Freedom Act).
Yet XKEYSCORE, the secret program that converts all the data it can see into searchable events like web pages loaded, files downloaded, forms submitted, emails and attachments sent, porn videos watched, TV shows streamed, and advertisements loaded, demonstrates how Internet traffic can be even more sensitive than phone calls. And unlike the Patriot Act’s phone metadata program, Congress has failed to limit the scope of programs like XKEYSCORE, which is presumably still operating at full speed. Maybe Verizon stopped giving phone metadata to the NSA, but if a Verizon engineer uploads a spreadsheet full of this metadata without proper encryption, the NSA may well get it anyway by spying directly on the cables that the spreadsheet travels over.
The outrage over bulk collection of our phone metadata makes sense: Metadata is private. Americans call suicide prevention hotlines, HIV testing services, phone sex services, advocacy groups for gun rights and for abortion rights, and the people they’re having affairs with. We use the phone to schedule job interviews without letting our current employer know, and to manage long-distance relationships. Most of us, at one point or another, have spent long hours on the phone discussing the most intimate details about our lives. There isn’t an American alive today who didn’t grow up with at least some access to a telephone, so Americans understand this well.
But Americans don’t understand the Internet yet. Bulk collection of phone metadata is, without a doubt, a violation of your privacy, but bulk surveillance of Internet traffic is orders of magnitude more invasive. People also use the Internet in all the ways they use phones — often inadvertently sharing even more intimate details through online searches. In fact, the phone network itself is starting to go over the Internet, without customers even noticing.
XKEYSCORE, as well as NSA’s programs that tap the Internet directly and feed data into it, have some legal problems: They violate First Amendment rights to freedom of association; they violate the Wiretap Act. But the biggest and most obvious concerns are with the Fourth Amendment.
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is short and concise:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
It means that Americans have a right to privacy. If government agents want to search you or seize your data, they must have a warrant. The warrant can only be issued if they have probable cause, and the warrant must be specific. It can’t say, “We want to seize everyone’s Internet traffic to see what’s in it.” Instead, it must say something like, “We want to seize a specific incriminating document from a specific suspect.”
But this is exactly what’s happening:
The government is indiscriminately seizing Internet traffic to see what’s in it, without probable cause. The ostensible justification is that, while tens of millions of Americans may be swept up in this dragnet, the real targets are foreigners. In a legal document called USSID 18, the NSA sets out policies and procedures that purportedly prevent unreasonable searches of data from U.S. persons.
Read more @ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/09/spying-internet-orders-magnitude-invasive-phone-metadata/
Read more @ http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/nsa-search-engine-taps-into-global/
The debate between the federal government and technology industry over encryption has largely focused on national security implications: Terrorism organizations could use encrypted messages to recruit supporters or hatch attacks and the federal government would be left in the dark if investigators aren’t granted access to those communications. Indeed, that was a central point in the testimony that Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates and FBI Director James Comey gave before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. But the impact on local law enforcement agencies could be felt more directly and broadly as messages, photos and videos stored on mobile devices have emerged as key pieces of evidence in criminal investigations over the past decade. Without access to that information, one witness told committee members, it would become more difficult to investigate and persecute robberies, sexual assaults, murders and other forms of violent crime. “Smartphones are ubiquitous, and there is almost no kind of case in which prosecutors have not used evidence from smartphones,” New York County District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said in written testimony. “Indeed, it is the rare case in which information from a smartphone is not useful,” One example Vance provided was a New York man who was capturing video on his iPhone at the time he was fatally shot. The evidence allowed police to more easily identify the killer and helped prosecutors to put him behind bars, he said. But the strong encryption policies that leading smartphone companies have put in place over the past year increasingly prevent law enforcement from legally searching devices. Both Apple and Google have changed the security measures on smartphones running the latest version of their operating systems such that only individuals with the pass code can unlock the phone and view its contents. The companies themselves no longer have that ability, and thus cannot comply with requests for information stored on the device.
The debate between the federal government and technology industry over encryption has largely focused on national security implications: Terrorism organizations could use encrypted messages to recruit supporters or hatch attacks and the federal government would be left in the dark if investigators aren’t granted access to those communications.
Indeed, that was a central point in the testimony that Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates and FBI Director James Comey gave before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
But the impact on local law enforcement agencies could be felt more directly and broadly as messages, photos and videos stored on mobile devices have emerged as key pieces of evidence in criminal investigations over the past decade. Without access to that information, one witness told committee members, it would become more difficult to investigate and persecute robberies, sexual assaults, murders and other forms of violent crime.
“Smartphones are ubiquitous, and there is almost no kind of case in which prosecutors have not used evidence from smartphones,” New York County District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said in written testimony. “Indeed, it is the rare case in which information from a smartphone is not useful,”
One example Vance provided was a New York man who was capturing video on his iPhone at the time he was fatally shot. The evidence allowed police to more easily identify the killer and helped prosecutors to put him behind bars, he said.
But the strong encryption policies that leading smartphone companies have put in place over the past year increasingly prevent law enforcement from legally searching devices. Both Apple and Google have changed the security measures on smartphones running the latest version of their operating systems such that only individuals with the pass code can unlock the phone and view its contents. The companies themselves no longer have that ability, and thus cannot comply with requests for information stored on the device.
Read more @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2015/07/08/why-phone-encryption-could-stymie-local-law-enforcement/
Now how on earth did they catch criminals before the internet and smart phones…. ?
Manhattan DA: iPhone Crypto Locked Out Cops 74 Times The debate over encryption and backdoors for law enforcement has long had a surplus of opinions and a deficit of data. On Wednesday, however, New York district attorney Cyrus Vance offered one actual number into the mix: The Manhattan DA’s office has encountered 74 iPhones whose full-disk encryption locked out a law enforcement investigation. In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the FBI, Justice Department and Manhattan DA’s office all asked for action from Congress to persuade or compel companies like Google and Apple to add law enforcement backdoors into their operating systems’ encryption. But only District attorney Vance put a number to what he described as the growing problem that iPhone security represents for his office’s investigators. Vance testified that in a total of 92 cases involving an iPhone running iOS 8, 74—or about 80 percent of all cases where an iOS 8 phone was involved—had been locked such that law enforcement couldn’t access the phone’s contents, thanks to Apple’s full-disk encryption upgrade, which it put into effect in September of last year. (A spokesperson for the Manhattan DA’s office clarified in an email that those 74 cases took place over the nine months ending on June 30.)1 “If that’s my experience in one office in Manhattan, it’s going to be a parallel experience across the country,” Vance told the panel of Senators. “I don’t believe that the option we should pursue when faced with inaccessibility to locked smartphones…is to say from a law enforcement perspective, ‘there’s nothing we can do.’ There has to be something we can do.”
The debate over encryption and backdoors for law enforcement has long had a surplus of opinions and a deficit of data. On Wednesday, however, New York district attorney Cyrus Vance offered one actual number into the mix: The Manhattan DA’s office has encountered 74 iPhones whose full-disk encryption locked out a law enforcement investigation.
In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the FBI, Justice Department and Manhattan DA’s office all asked for action from Congress to persuade or compel companies like Google and Apple to add law enforcement backdoors into their operating systems’ encryption. But only District attorney Vance put a number to what he described as the growing problem that iPhone security represents for his office’s investigators. Vance testified that in a total of 92 cases involving an iPhone running iOS 8, 74—or about 80 percent of all cases where an iOS 8 phone was involved—had been locked such that law enforcement couldn’t access the phone’s contents, thanks to Apple’s full-disk encryption upgrade, which it put into effect in September of last year. (A spokesperson for the Manhattan DA’s office clarified in an email that those 74 cases took place over the nine months ending on June 30.)1
“If that’s my experience in one office in Manhattan, it’s going to be a parallel experience across the country,” Vance told the panel of Senators. “I don’t believe that the option we should pursue when faced with inaccessibility to locked smartphones…is to say from a law enforcement perspective, ‘there’s nothing we can do.’ There has to be something we can do.”
Read more @ http://www.wired.com/2015/07/manhattan-da-iphone-crypto-foiled-cops-74-times/
Read more @ http://www.engadget.com/2015/07/08/iphone-encryption-police-data/
"Criminal defendants across the nation are the principal beneficiaries of iOS 8." Following the leaks by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden that began in the summer of 2013, encryption and encryption backdoors have become hot-button topics of discussion. That's because many companies, including Apple and Google, have been going out of their way to encrypt products after the public learned that the US had embarked on a massive, legally and morally suspect electronic spying operation against its own citizenry and the global community at large. Fearing encryption is undermining their surveillance capabilities, government officials from the US and across the pond in the UK have been increasingly decrying encryption or at least demanding a government-accessible backdoor to unlock said encryption. One of the latest rants against encryption occurred Wednesday. FBI Director James Comey complained to a Senate panel that companies, like Apple, are building products in which the keys necessary to decrypt communications and electronic devices are being left "solely in the hands of the end user." In a joint statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey and a Justice Department official essentially told lawmakers that we're all doomed unless companies bake encryption backdoors into their products to allow for lawful access by the government. Comey said the problems backdoor-less encryption presents to law enforcement "are grave, growing, and extremely complex." But that doomsday scenario was tame compared to what New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr told the panel. He said his office handles some 100,000 criminal cases a year spanning murder, rape, robbery, identity theft, financial fraud, and terrorism.
Following the leaks by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden that began in the summer of 2013, encryption and encryption backdoors have become hot-button topics of discussion.
That's because many companies, including Apple and Google, have been going out of their way to encrypt products after the public learned that the US had embarked on a massive, legally and morally suspect electronic spying operation against its own citizenry and the global community at large. Fearing encryption is undermining their surveillance capabilities, government officials from the US and across the pond in the UK have been increasingly decrying encryption or at least demanding a government-accessible backdoor to unlock said encryption.
One of the latest rants against encryption occurred Wednesday.
FBI Director James Comey complained to a Senate panel that companies, like Apple, are building products in which the keys necessary to decrypt communications and electronic devices are being left "solely in the hands of the end user." In a joint statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey and a Justice Department official essentially told lawmakers that we're all doomed unless companies bake encryption backdoors into their products to allow for lawful access by the government. Comey said the problems backdoor-less encryption presents to law enforcement "are grave, growing, and extremely complex."
But that doomsday scenario was tame compared to what New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr told the panel. He said his office handles some 100,000 criminal cases a year spanning murder, rape, robbery, identity theft, financial fraud, and terrorism.
Read more @ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/this-is-the-most-outrageous-government-tirade-against-ios-8-encryption/
FBI's director says he's not a "maniac" about encryption. The experts disagree. It's the conversation that just won't end. In case you hadn't noticed, in recent months there's been fervent discussion both for and against encryption, which has law enforcement and experts at odds. The debate began in the wake of the Edward Snowden affair after Apple began encrypting iPhones and iPads running the latest software. By cutting out Apple from the data demand process, law enforcement must go directly to the device owner. That -- as you might imagine -- incensed law enforcement and intelligence agencies, because that requires informing suspects that they're under investigation. Without any congressional backing, the feds asked for the only thing they could: "backdoor" access to tech companies' systems to pull data on suspected criminals and terrorists. On Tuesday, more than a dozen elite cryptographers and security experts penned a letter effectively calling on the feds to stop flogging an already dead horse. From the report in The New York Times:
FBI's director says he's not a "maniac" about encryption. The experts disagree.
It's the conversation that just won't end.
In case you hadn't noticed, in recent months there's been fervent discussion both for and against encryption, which has law enforcement and experts at odds.
The debate began in the wake of the Edward Snowden affair after Apple began encrypting iPhones and iPads running the latest software. By cutting out Apple from the data demand process, law enforcement must go directly to the device owner. That -- as you might imagine -- incensed law enforcement and intelligence agencies, because that requires informing suspects that they're under investigation.
Without any congressional backing, the feds asked for the only thing they could: "backdoor" access to tech companies' systems to pull data on suspected criminals and terrorists.
On Tuesday, more than a dozen elite cryptographers and security experts penned a letter effectively calling on the feds to stop flogging an already dead horse.
From the report in The New York Times:
Read more @ http://www.zdnet.com/article/because-there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-secure-backdoor-gosh-darn-it/
WASHINGTON — Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance testified before Congress Wednesday that encryption technology from Apple and Google has made it almost impossible for crime fighters to access phones, laptops and data of criminals even with search warrants. “This digital world is, in fact, the 21st Century crime scene,” Vance told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “(And) criminals are literally and figuratively laughing in the face of law enforcement.” Both Google and Apple have deployed new operating systems that hide users’ passcode from the tech giants – so despite a search warrant the companies could not unlock a suspected criminal’s phone. The tech leaders and a long list of other companies and cyber experts have pushed back against calls to scale back encryption – especially following post-Edward Snowden privacy concerns and regular threats from hackers. “We urge you to reject any proposal that US companies deliberately weaken the security of their products,” Apple, Google and others wrote to President Obama in May.
WASHINGTON — Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance testified before Congress Wednesday that encryption technology from Apple and Google has made it almost impossible for crime fighters to access phones, laptops and data of criminals even with search warrants.
“This digital world is, in fact, the 21st Century crime scene,” Vance told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “(And) criminals are literally and figuratively laughing in the face of law enforcement.”
Both Google and Apple have deployed new operating systems that hide users’ passcode from the tech giants – so despite a search warrant the companies could not unlock a suspected criminal’s phone.
The tech leaders and a long list of other companies and cyber experts have pushed back against calls to scale back encryption – especially following post-Edward Snowden privacy concerns and regular threats from hackers.
“We urge you to reject any proposal that US companies deliberately weaken the security of their products,” Apple, Google and others wrote to President Obama in May.
Read more @ http://nypost.com/2015/07/08/da-blames-digital-world-for-delay-in-crime-investigations/
The data encryption that Apple and Google use in their smart phones is making it harder for local law-enforcement officials to do their jobs, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said Wednesday during testimony before the U.S. Senate judiciary committee in Washington, D.C. Vance’s prepared testimony, provided to Capital, argued that local law-enforcement officials are paying the price for concerns over the federal government's mass collection of phone data. “I want to emphasize I am testifying from a state and local perspective," Vance said. "I am not advocating bulk data collection or unauthorized surveillance. Instead, I am concerned about protecting local law enforcement’s ability to conduct targeted requests for information, scrutinized by an impartial judge for his or her evaluation as to whether probable cause has been established." The new data encryption deployed by Google and Apple in their phone software is, according to Vance, “engineered…such that they can no longer assist law enforcement with search warrants written for passcode-protected smartphones.”
The data encryption that Apple and Google use in their smart phones is making it harder for local law-enforcement officials to do their jobs, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said Wednesday during testimony before the U.S. Senate judiciary committee in Washington, D.C.
Vance’s prepared testimony, provided to Capital, argued that local law-enforcement officials are paying the price for concerns over the federal government's mass collection of phone data.
“I want to emphasize I am testifying from a state and local perspective," Vance said. "I am not advocating bulk data collection or unauthorized surveillance. Instead, I am concerned about protecting local law enforcement’s ability to conduct targeted requests for information, scrutinized by an impartial judge for his or her evaluation as to whether probable cause has been established."
The new data encryption deployed by Google and Apple in their phone software is, according to Vance, “engineered…such that they can no longer assist law enforcement with search warrants written for passcode-protected smartphones.”
Read more @ http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2015/07/8571632/vance-says-phone-encryption-hurts-crime-victims
“Encryption works,” said Edward Snowden in June 2013, in reply to a question from a Guardian reader about how he could protect his communications from NSA/GCHQ surveillance. “Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on.” Mr Snowden is a smart and thoughtful guy and he chooses his words with care. So note the qualifications in that sentence: “strong crypto” and “properly implemented”. By strong crypto, he meant public-key cryptography, which works by using two separate keys, one of which is private and one of which is public. Although different, the two parts of the key pair are mathematically linked. The concept originated, ironically, in GCHQ in 1973, but only reached the public domain four years later after three MIT researchers, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, independently invented a way to implement it. Their algorithm was christened RSA, based on the first letters of their surnames. In 1991, an American geek and activist named Phil Zimmermann implemented an open-source implementation of RSA and called it “Pretty Good Privacy” or PGP. Its significance was that, for the first time in history, it enabled citizens to protect the privacy of their communications with military-grade cryptography. The US government was not amused, defined PGP as a “munition” and prosecuted Zimmermann for exporting munitions without a licence. With characteristic chutzpah, Zimmermann found a way round the government ban. Harnessing the power of the First Amendment, he published the entire source code of PGP in a hardback book that was distributed by MIT Press. Anyone purchasing the book could then rip off the covers and scan the code, thereby enabling him or her to build and compile their own version of PGP.
“Encryption works,” said Edward Snowden in June 2013, in reply to a question from a Guardian reader about how he could protect his communications from NSA/GCHQ surveillance. “Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on.” Mr Snowden is a smart and thoughtful guy and he chooses his words with care. So note the qualifications in that sentence: “strong crypto” and “properly implemented”.
By strong crypto, he meant public-key cryptography, which works by using two separate keys, one of which is private and one of which is public. Although different, the two parts of the key pair are mathematically linked. The concept originated, ironically, in GCHQ in 1973, but only reached the public domain four years later after three MIT researchers, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, independently invented a way to implement it. Their algorithm was christened RSA, based on the first letters of their surnames.
In 1991, an American geek and activist named Phil Zimmermann implemented an open-source implementation of RSA and called it “Pretty Good Privacy” or PGP. Its significance was that, for the first time in history, it enabled citizens to protect the privacy of their communications with military-grade cryptography. The US government was not amused, defined PGP as a “munition” and prosecuted Zimmermann for exporting munitions without a licence.
With characteristic chutzpah, Zimmermann found a way round the government ban. Harnessing the power of the First Amendment, he published the entire source code of PGP in a hardback book that was distributed by MIT Press. Anyone purchasing the book could then rip off the covers and scan the code, thereby enabling him or her to build and compile their own version of PGP.
Read more @ http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/05/encryption-humans-weakest-link
President Barack Obama wears a FitBit monitor on his wrist to count his steps and calories, and has waxed poetic about the power of wearable technology to “give each of us information that allows us to stay healthier.” On Capitol Hill, 13 members have joined together across party lines this year to launch the Internet of Things Caucus. Started by a former Microsoft marketing executive and a Republican who made his fortune in electronics, the caucus pledges to help foster the coming explosion of “products, services and interconnected opportunities that didn’t exist a generation ago and will be taken for granted by the end of this generation.” Then again, the caucus hasn't even held its first meeting yet. Obama's own government panel has warned of a "small — and rapidly closing — window" for the U.S. government to successfully figure out how to deal with the tech explosion everyone is so excited about.The number of web-linked gadgets surpassed the number of humans on the planet seven years ago, and today the Internet of Things, the profusion of networked objects and sensors that increasingly touch our lives, is quickly turning our physical world into something totally new. As American consumers start filling their homes and businesses with networked technology — smart watches sending health data wirelessly, cars that can take over for their human drivers, and drones tracking wildfires and cattle — POLITICO set out to determine how well government was keeping up. Beyond one fledgling caucus, how is Washington grappling with this sweeping new force? The short answer: It's not. This first-of-its-kind investigation involved reviewing hundreds of pages of federal reports and hearing transcripts, attending many of the inside-the-Beltway events now proliferating on the Internet of Things and conducting interviews with more than 50 senators and members of Congress, Capitol Hill staffers, federal, state and local agency officials, privacy advocates and tech whizzes all feeling their way into this new frontier. I also wired myself up to see just what it felt like to move through this new world as an early adopter. What I found, overall, is that the government doesn’t have any single mechanism to address the Internet of Things or the challenges it’s presenting. Instead, the new networked-object technologies are covered by at least two dozen separate federal agencies — from the Food and Drug Administration to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, from aviation to agriculture — and more than 30 different congressional committees. Congress has written no laws or any kind of overarching national strategy specifically for the Internet of Things. The Federal Trade Commission has emerged as the government's de facto police force for dubious business practices related to the Internet of Things. But it faces serious questions about its mandate, given the lack of underlying laws, standards and policies that apply. And numerous other offices have grabbed onto their own piece of the elephant, often without treating it as the same animal. For instance, NHTSA and the Federal Aviation Administration are both grappling with controversial Internet of Things-related rules, on driverless cars and drones, respectively, though their work isn’t closely coordinated. One of the few government documents specifically to address the IOT was a report by a White House-chartered task force published last November. After examining the cybersecurity implications of new networked technology for national security and emergency preparedness, the group warned that the U.S. had until the end of the decade to really influence whether it becomes a success or a catastrophic failure. "If the country fails to do so, it will be coping with the consequences for generations," the report by the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee concluded. So far, we seem to be letting the window close. While the tech companies behind the IOT are working hard to make their case in Washington, the budding controversies and challenges the industry faces has barely shown up as a coherent problem on the government’s radar. That day may be coming. “If you think you’ve got a cybersecurity problem now, wait for the cold winter day when a hacker halfway around the world turns down the thermostat on 100,000 homes in Washington D.C.,” said Marc Rotenberg, the head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Stung by years of Republican criticism that his administration is too quick to regulate, Obama's Cabinet has gone out of its way to show how friendly it is to the innovation potential of the Internet of Things without talking much about its consumer and public-sector risks. Congress has been friendly, too, which is not the same thing as informed. “There’s 435 members of the House, 100 members of the Senate, and most of them still don’t know what the Internet of Things is,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who co-chairs the recently created Internet of Things Caucus, and counts himself an industry evangelist. Where government involvement is concerned, many of the most plugged-in legislators belong in the "wait-and-see" camp. “I don’t think we should wait 15 years until this thing is fully operational before we start making public policy,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat who has taken a leading role on the issue. “But I think we could wait 15 months.” But the Internet of Things isn't waiting. Every second, as tech CTO Dave Evans calculates elsewhere in this special report, 127 items are added to the Internet. Toasters and heart monitors; trucking fleets and individual cows. The world we inhabit is becoming a digital landscape, one that tracks and responds to each of us. Is anyone in Washington paying attention? IN MAY 1869, on a promontory in northwest Utah, America changed forever. That’s when railroad tycoons and their workers drove in the ceremonial "Golden Spike" that completed the first transcontinental railroad and knit the East Coast to the expanding West. The railroad was a phenomenal driver of economic growth and created fortunes — but its unprecedented power also created monopolies and complaints of corruption and unfairness. Two decades later, it led Congress to create the first U.S. regulatory agency: the Interstate Commerce Commission. Other big moments in American innovation history have followed similar patterns. Washington has tended to play the role of cheerleader-in-chief — standing aside as new markets grew, and watching the consequences of each new technology lead to messy patchworks of local and state rules, before finally deciding they required federal attention as a coherent national issue.
President Barack Obama wears a FitBit monitor on his wrist to count his steps and calories, and has waxed poetic about the power of wearable technology to “give each of us information that allows us to stay healthier.”
On Capitol Hill, 13 members have joined together across party lines this year to launch the Internet of Things Caucus. Started by a former Microsoft marketing executive and a Republican who made his fortune in electronics, the caucus pledges to help foster the coming explosion of “products, services and interconnected opportunities that didn’t exist a generation ago and will be taken for granted by the end of this generation.”
Then again, the caucus hasn't even held its first meeting yet. Obama's own government panel has warned of a "small — and rapidly closing — window" for the U.S. government to successfully figure out how to deal with the tech explosion everyone is so excited about.The number of web-linked gadgets surpassed the number of humans on the planet seven years ago, and today the Internet of Things, the profusion of networked objects and sensors that increasingly touch our lives, is quickly turning our physical world into something totally new. As American consumers start filling their homes and businesses with networked technology — smart watches sending health data wirelessly, cars that can take over for their human drivers, and drones tracking wildfires and cattle — POLITICO set out to determine how well government was keeping up. Beyond one fledgling caucus, how is Washington grappling with this sweeping new force?
The short answer: It's not.
This first-of-its-kind investigation involved reviewing hundreds of pages of federal reports and hearing transcripts, attending many of the inside-the-Beltway events now proliferating on the Internet of Things and conducting interviews with more than 50 senators and members of Congress, Capitol Hill staffers, federal, state and local agency officials, privacy advocates and tech whizzes all feeling their way into this new frontier. I also wired myself up to see just what it felt like to move through this new world as an early adopter.
What I found, overall, is that the government doesn’t have any single mechanism to address the Internet of Things or the challenges it’s presenting. Instead, the new networked-object technologies are covered by at least two dozen separate federal agencies — from the Food and Drug Administration to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, from aviation to agriculture — and more than 30 different congressional committees. Congress has written no laws or any kind of overarching national strategy specifically for the Internet of Things.
The Federal Trade Commission has emerged as the government's de facto police force for dubious business practices related to the Internet of Things. But it faces serious questions about its mandate, given the lack of underlying laws, standards and policies that apply. And numerous other offices have grabbed onto their own piece of the elephant, often without treating it as the same animal. For instance, NHTSA and the Federal Aviation Administration are both grappling with controversial Internet of Things-related rules, on driverless cars and drones, respectively, though their work isn’t closely coordinated.
One of the few government documents specifically to address the IOT was a report by a White House-chartered task force published last November. After examining the cybersecurity implications of new networked technology for national security and emergency preparedness, the group warned that the U.S. had until the end of the decade to really influence whether it becomes a success or a catastrophic failure. "If the country fails to do so, it will be coping with the consequences for generations," the report by the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee concluded.
So far, we seem to be letting the window close. While the tech companies behind the IOT are working hard to make their case in Washington, the budding controversies and challenges the industry faces has barely shown up as a coherent problem on the government’s radar. That day may be coming. “If you think you’ve got a cybersecurity problem now, wait for the cold winter day when a hacker halfway around the world turns down the thermostat on 100,000 homes in Washington D.C.,” said Marc Rotenberg, the head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Stung by years of Republican criticism that his administration is too quick to regulate, Obama's Cabinet has gone out of its way to show how friendly it is to the innovation potential of the Internet of Things without talking much about its consumer and public-sector risks. Congress has been friendly, too, which is not the same thing as informed.
“There’s 435 members of the House, 100 members of the Senate, and most of them still don’t know what the Internet of Things is,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who co-chairs the recently created Internet of Things Caucus, and counts himself an industry evangelist.
Where government involvement is concerned, many of the most plugged-in legislators belong in the "wait-and-see" camp. “I don’t think we should wait 15 years until this thing is fully operational before we start making public policy,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat who has taken a leading role on the issue. “But I think we could wait 15 months.”
But the Internet of Things isn't waiting. Every second, as tech CTO Dave Evans calculates elsewhere in this special report, 127 items are added to the Internet. Toasters and heart monitors; trucking fleets and individual cows. The world we inhabit is becoming a digital landscape, one that tracks and responds to each of us. Is anyone in Washington paying attention?
IN MAY 1869, on a promontory in northwest Utah, America changed forever. That’s when railroad tycoons and their workers drove in the ceremonial "Golden Spike" that completed the first transcontinental railroad and knit the East Coast to the expanding West. The railroad was a phenomenal driver of economic growth and created fortunes — but its unprecedented power also created monopolies and complaints of corruption and unfairness. Two decades later, it led Congress to create the first U.S. regulatory agency: the Interstate Commerce Commission.
Other big moments in American innovation history have followed similar patterns. Washington has tended to play the role of cheerleader-in-chief — standing aside as new markets grew, and watching the consequences of each new technology lead to messy patchworks of local and state rules, before finally deciding they required federal attention as a coherent national issue.
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
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