Big Data, Internet of Things, and Cars

October 31, 2016, Kitchener, Ontario

Posted by: Robert Deutschmann, Personal Injury Lawyer

Self driving cars are coming to our roads. We already have lots of cars with ‘driver assist’ - whether that assistance is helping you park or stay in your lane, or advising you if someone is in your blind spot. We are developing some comfort with the idea of handing over mundane aspects of driving.

There are real big questions to be addressed with self driving cars/autonomous/driver assist cars though, and they are very interesting. In a world where cars find parking spaces, read road signs or incorporate GPS data to avoid busy traffic we allow a lot of access to car computer systems and require a lot of data storage capability as well. The data will be stored in the cloud and the cars will communicate with one another and other devices to get their tasks accomplished. The question of who controls the data, who has access to data and hacking all become significant issues.

As we have already seen with the Internet Of Things (IOT) hacking is a real concern. The IOT is what we call all the internet connected devices. Manufacturers are moving to have everything connected from washing machines, fridges, cars, thermostats to entire home systems. They foresee a world where we can instantly control our lighting, check what’s in the fridge and start our laundry from work or anywhere else. Wired Magazine has found holes in these computers in everything from WIFI Barbie dolls to cars. Hacks have been done to show the weaknesses although we haven’t seen any wide scale malicious hacking yet. Medical devices are also open to hacking.

Imagine the disruption if someone hacked into all the fridges and turned them off, or the disruptions to power systems if hackers decided to turn every appliance on at once, or disabled breaks and steering on all the cars on the road…

Security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek forever altered the automobile industry’s notion of “vehicle safety” in July when they demonstrated for WIRED that they could remotely hack a 2014 Jeep Cherokee to disable its transmission and brakes. Their work led Fiat Chrysler to issue an unprecedented recall for 1.4 million vehicles, mailing out USB drives with a patch for the vulnerable infotainment systems and blocking the attack on the Sprint network that connected its cars and trucks. (https://www.wired.com/2015/12/2015-the-year-the-internet-of-things-got-hacked/)

It is important that government and car companies have an idea of how they plan to protect consumers and drivers from data breaches, and from hacks to the infrastructure before we go too far down the path with cars that function on their own. The serious nature of the threats that lie ahead aren’t’ well known to the public. Most of us don’t even realize how many of the things we own are forming part of the IOT.

About Deutschmann Law

Deutschmann Law serves South-Western Ontario with offices in Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Woodstock, Brantford, Stratford and Ayr. The law practice of Robert Deutschmann focuses almost exclusively in personal injury and disability insurance matters. For more information, please visit www.deutschmannlaw.com or call us at 1-519-742-7774.