The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (“NHTSA”) have announced the agenda for their joint workshop on the consumer privacy and security implications of connected cars, to be held on Wednesday, June 28, 2017.
The FTC's acting chair, Maureen K. Ohlhausen, will open the workshop at 10:00 a.m., followed by introductory comments from the NHTSA's acting executive director, Terry T. Shelton.
Next on the agenda will be keynote remarks from Jeff Massimilla, chief product cybersecurity officer at General Motors and vice chair of the Automotive Information Sharing and Analysis Center (“Auto-ISAC”), and a presentation by Nat Beuse, the NHTSA's associate administrator for vehicle safety research.
Three panels will follow, featuring representatives from industry, academia, and consumer groups.
The first panel will focus on connected cars and data, including the technologies that generate, collect, and use consumer information and how it is used – for example, vehicle-to-vehicle speed and position data collected for crash avoidance. Issues to be discussed include what secondary uses there could be for that information and whether original equipment manufacturers should use that data for purposes other than safety.
The second panel will address cybersecurity and data. Issues to be discussed here include whether connected and autonomous cars pose potential risks to the security of the data they collect; the role for industry self-regulation and government standards (such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) Framework); and what can be learned from the experience of industries such as the aviation industry.
The third panel will focus on privacy, exploring the privacy implications of connected cars; whether the Fair Information Practice Principles apply; how consumer notice and choice principles operate in this context; and the role of the FTC and other agencies.
The acting director of the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection, Tom Pahl, will offer closing remarks at 4:30.
Registration for the workshop opens on June 28, at 8:30 a.m. at the FTC's Constitution Center conference facility, located at 400 7th Street, S.W., in Washington, D.C.
The event also will be webcast from a link that will go live just before 10:00.
Steven A. Meyerowitz
Steven A. Meyerowitz, a Harvard Law School graduate, is the founder and president of Meyerowitz Communications Inc., a law firm marketing communications consulting company. He may be contacted at [email protected].