Towards an accountable Internet of Things: A call for reviewability

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the importance of reviewability and accountability mechanisms in IoT systems to ensure responsible deployment, understanding, and management of complex, data-driven interconnected devices.

Contribution

It highlights the urgent need for legal, technical, and organizational review mechanisms to support accountability in increasingly complex IoT environments.

Findings

Identifies key accountability challenges in IoT systems.

Proposes mechanisms for reviewability and accountability.

Calls for integrated legal, technical, and organizational solutions.

Abstract

As the IoT becomes increasingly ubiquitous, concerns are being raised about how IoT systems are being built and deployed. Connected devices will generate vast quantities of data, which drive algorithmic systems and result in real-world consequences. Things will go wrong, and when they do, how do we identify what happened, why they happened, and who is responsible? Given the complexity of such systems, where do we even begin? This chapter outlines aspects of accountability as they relate to IoT, in the context of the increasingly interconnected and data-driven nature of such systems. Specifically, we argue the urgent need for mechanisms - legal, technical, and organisational - that facilitate the review of IoT systems. Such mechanisms work to support accountability, by enabling the relevant stakeholders to better understand, assess, interrogate and challenge the connected environments that increasingly pervade our world.