The Guardian
US states are scrambling to regulate self-driving cars, but the focus on physical safety ignores the more complex issues of data privacy and security
States across the US are scrambling to figure out how to regulate self-driving cars, wearable technologies that track our health, smart homes that constantly monitor their infrastructure and the rest of the devices emerging from the so-called “internet of things” (IoT). The result is a smattering of incomplete and inconsistent law that could depress the upside of the technology without really addressing its risks.
What’s most notable about these early regulatory attempts is not that they are varied – that is to be expected. It’s that the regulations deal mostly with physical safety, leaving privacy and cybersecurity issues almost wholly unexamined. This seems to be a pattern now, true too of drone regulation, where regulatory bodies have jurisdiction over physical threats, not informational ones.
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