Mario Wagner for POLITICO

The AgendaINTERNET OF THINGS

What Washington really knows about the Internet of ThingsA POLITICO investigation.

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN

President Barack Obama wears a FitBit monitor on his wrist to count his steps and calories, andhas waxed poetic about the power of wearable technology to give each of us information thatallows 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 madehis fortune in electronics, the caucus pledges to help foster the coming explosion of products,services and interconnected opportunities that didnt exist a generation ago and will be taken forgranted by the end of this generation.

Then again, the caucus hasn't even held its first meeting yet. Obama's own government panel haswarned of a "small and rapidly closing window" for the U.S. government to successfully figureout 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 increasinglytouch our lives, is quickly turning our physical world into something totally new. As Americanconsumers start filling their homes and businesses with networked technology smart watchessending health data wirelessly, cars that can take over for their human drivers, and drones trackingwildfires and cattle POLITICO set out to determine how well government was keepingup. 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 andhearing transcripts, attending many of the inside-the-Beltway events now proliferating on theInternet of Things and conducting interviews with more than 50 senators and members ofCongress, Capitol Hill staffers, federal, state and local agency officials, privacy advocates and techwhizzes all feeling their way into this new frontier. I also wired myself up to see just what it felt liketo move through this new world as an early adopter.

What I found, overall, is that the government doesnt have any single mechanism to address theInternet of Things or the challenges its presenting. Instead, the new networked-objecttechnologies are covered by at least two dozen separate federal agencies from the Food and DrugAdministration 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 kindof overarching national strategy specifically for the Internet of Things.

The Federal Trade Commission has emerged as the government's de facto police force for dubiousbusiness practices related to the Internet of Things. But it faces serious questions about itsmandate, given the lack of underlying laws, standards and policies that apply. And numerous otheroffices have grabbed onto their own piece of the elephant, often without treating it as the sameanimal. For instance, NHTSA and the Federal Aviation Administration are both grappling withcontroversial Internet of Things-related rules, on driverless cars and drones, respectively, though

their work isnt closely coordinated.

One of the few government documents specifically to address the IOT was a report by a WhiteHouse-chartered task force published last November. After examining the cybersecurityimplications of new networked technology for national security and emergency preparedness, thegroup warned that the U.S. had until the end of the decade to really influence whether it becomes asuccess or a catastrophic failure. "If the country fails to do so, it will be coping with theconsequences for generations," the report by the President's National SecurityTelecommunications Advisory Committee concluded.

So far, we seem to be letting the window close. While the tech companies behind the IOT areworking hard to make their case in Washington, the budding controversies and challenges theindustry faces has barely shown up as a coherent problem on the governments radar. That daymay be coming. If you think youve got a cybersecurity problem now, wait for the cold winter daywhen a hacker halfway around the world turns down the thermostat on 100,000 homes inWashington 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'sCabinet has gone out of its way to show how friendly it is to the innovation potential of the Internetof Things without talking much about its consumer and public-sector risks. Congress has beenfriendly, too, which is not the same thing as informed.

Theres 435 members of the House, 100 members of the Senate, and most of them still dont knowwhat the Internet of Things is, said Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who co-chairs therecently created Internet of Things Caucus, and counts himself an industry evangelist.

Where government involvement is concerned, many of the most plugged-in legislators belong inthe "wait-and-see" camp. I dont think we should wait 15 years until this thing is fully operationalbefore we start making public policy, said Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat who has taken aleading 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 calculateselsewhere 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 thattracks and responds to each of us. Is anyone in Washington paying attention?

IN MAY 1869, on a promontory in northwest Utah, America changed forever. Thatswhen railroad tycoons and their workers drove in the ceremonial "Golden Spike" that completedthe first transcontinental railroad and knit the East Coast to the expanding West. The railroad wasa phenomenal driver of economic growth and created fortunes but its unprecedented power also

created monopolies and complaints of corruption and unfairness. Two decades later, itled Congress to create the first U.S. regulatory agency: the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Other big moments in American innovation history have followed similar patterns. Washingtonhas tended to play the role of cheerleader-in-chief standing aside as new markets grew, andwatching the consequences of each new technology lead to messy patchworks of local and staterules, before finally deciding they required federal attention as a coherent national issue.

Congress is often a little behind the curve, said Donald Ritchie, the recently retired Senatehistorian. They have to perceive theres a problem. And the advocates and lobbyists have to tellthem theres a problem before they actually do something about it.

Before the Food and Drug Administration's creation in 1906, for instance, Americans had endureddecades of food scandals and a rising market in unregulated (and useless) medicines. Henry Fordstarted pumping out Model Ts at the start of the 20th century, and Americans got a nationalhighway system by the mid-1950s. But Congress took another decade before imposing safety andenvironmental regulations on the automobile industry.

It takes a long time for the civic community and the government to catch up with the risks, saidRalph Nader, the consumer advocate whose 1965 book "Unsafe at Any Speed" had a major role inforcing lawmakers to impose new safety rules on the auto industry.

Air travel followed its own convoluted early path. It was a decade after the Wright Brothersinvention that Congress established a research-and-development program for aeronautics, andanother decade before the Commerce Department got its first crack at setting federal safetystandards on the new industry. The Civil Aeronautics Authority arrived in 1938 to regulate airlinefares and determine carrier routes. But not until the 1950s did President Dwight D. Eisenhowersign the law that established the precursor to the modern day FAA.

As for the Internet itself, the technology was almost an accidental byproduct of governmentresearch efforts that date back decades to the Defense Department. As it took off, and came intomore peoples homes, lawmakers in the 1990s did propose bills aimed at protecting Americans'privacy and safety from this new wave of information. Most were rebuffed. And while President BillClinton near the end of his first term signed the Communications Decency Act mocked at thetime as the "Great Cyberporn Panic of 1995" the Supreme Court in 1997 issued its first ruling onInternet regulations by applying First Amendment protections to X-rated materials.

The view of the Hill on the Internet was it was new, it was radical, it was explosive and the almostimmediate reaction back then was to regulate it, said Daniel Caprio, a former chief privacy officerand deputy assistant secretary for technology policy in President George W. Bushs CommerceDepartment. Thankfully, thats not what we did.

While Americans died without rules for food, flight and cars, the Internet overall has clearlybenefited from government non-interference. So which category does the Internet of Things fallinto? Given its potential to reach deep into citizens daily lives tracking their heat use, their foodshopping, even their tooth brushing many experts struggle to pinpoint exactly where it shouldfall on the regulatory spectrum. In one sense, its just a tech market, a network of chips and sensorsand wireless standards. But in another, its something that touches American citizens much moredirectly and personally than the Internet itself ever has.

This is the weirdest damn thing we have in the world in terms of governance at the moment, so itsno wonder Congress cant figure out how to get its arms around it," said Christopher Hill, aprofessor emeritus at George Mason University and expert on the nexus of policy and technologicalhistory. "Its not Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T or Sprint. Its not Cisco. And its not Amazon. Andits not Dell. Who the heck is it? Thats one of the problems we have. The it in question isextremely diffuse.

A RECENT BUSTLING Thursday morning in the Capitol offered a pretty clear picture of justhow the government is dealing with this amorphous new challenge or isnt.

In the Rayburn House Office Building, the Energy and Commerce Committee was putting thefinishing touches on a sweeping health care bill that would create a roadmap for the exchange ofelectronic health records, provide stronger backing for telehealth programs, and more clearlydefine the Food and Drug Administrations role in regulating wearable monitors and health apps.

Across the hall, the Financial Services Committee collected testimony on cybersecurity threats thatthe banking industry faces in protecting consumer data on electronic payments. Former MinnesotaGov. Tim Pawlenty, now a major industry lobbyist, told lawmakers how hackers represent anexistential threat to our economy and called for federal standards notifying consumers of databreaches, pointing out the industry faced a confusing mix of almost 50 different state standards.

Congressional members flowed in and out of the hearing room to chat with lobbyists and staffers inthe marble hallway. When I stopped Rep. Sean Duffy to ask about some of the privacy and securityissues central to the IOT, the Wisconsin Republican and former MTV Real World star whofashions himself as tech savvy and who is known to take selfies with anyone looked upquizzically: The Internet of Things? What the hell is that?

One floor up, the American Constitution Society hosted a luncheon panel discussion on theregulatory challenges facing Airbnb, Uber and other companies representing the so-called sharingeconomy. With GPS location systems and fares that fluctuate based on market demands, Uber hasfound itself pushing hard to change government regulations built around the rival taxi industry;like many Internet of Things technologies, it also blows up traditional assumptions about whobenefits from new technologies and who needs protections. No one ever thought that Uber wouldbe like a black mans dream, right? said Christina Weaver, director at the Raben Group, aliberal consulting firm, explaining how Uber can eliminate the problem African- American menface hailing a taxi in person.

Across the Capitol, Michael Huerta, head of the Federal Aviation Administration, got an unusuallywarm embrace in the afternoon from a group of lawmaker who normally would not roll out the redcarpet for him: Senate and House Republicans. The reason: He was unveiling a government-industry-academic partnership on unmanned aerial vehicles headquartered at Mississippi StateUniversity. The new research institution, he said, would help demonstrate how the Internet ofThings applies to farmers, oil workers and many more people to help them safely and efficiently dotheir jobs. While this partnership looked an awful lot like a modern-day version of pork in anearmark-free world, the Republicans didn't seem to mind.

I want to add my congratulations to the administrator," said Rep. Kevin Cramer, a Republicanfrom North Dakota whose home-state academics would contribute to the drone research effort."You know, sometimes we Republicans dont get that many opportunities to congratulate theadministration on good decisions. But you made a good one here."

Unmentioned was perhaps a more consequential effort Huerta is leading, work on a new rule thatwould set weight, height, time and location restrictions on Americans' use of drones. The future ofthis multibillion-dollar industry will hinge on how restrictive his policies are. And it wasnt hard to

appreciate why: About 10 minutes later, the televisions all across the Capitol running nonstop cableswitched into "BREAKING NEWS" mode: The Secret Service had just arrested a man for flying adrone in Lafayette Square a park right across the street from the White House.

ALL OF THESE new Internet of Things technologies wont just automate everyday activities.They are also creating vast amounts of data that users won't necessarily know are being collectedon them. Can the government do anything about it? Should it?

Personal health data is stringently policed by the 1996 Health Insurance Portability andAccountability Act, and the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act required financial institutions to giveconsumers a privacy notice spelling out what information is collected on them, where and how itsbeing shared and also how the data gets protected.

Obama has been trying for several years to expand consumers online privacy rights, but so far, heshad little luck making progress. In a 2014 White House report on Big Data, which noted the IOTwas only in the very nascent stage, the president called on Congress to pass data-breachnotification requirements for consumers, and a separate plan limiting data collection on childrenand teenagers. But when the White House released its own draft bill earlier this year, it waspromptly attacked by tech companies complaining it would stifle innovation and privacy advocateswho saw the bill as a sellout to the tech industry.

Absent action on a larger privacy bill, lawmakers are taking on some IOT issues in piecemealoversight fashion. For example, Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Energy andCommerce Committee partnered in May to send letters to 17 U.S. and foreign auto manufacturersand the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asking what they're doing to secure thedata collected on Americans by their new automated cars.

Some lawmakers are trying to extend privacy safeguards into these new realms. Sen. Ed Markey(D-Mass.) asked three years ago, back when he was still in the House, for the Food and DrugAdministration to improve its oversight of implantable wireless medical devices that could becontrolled by hackers a risk that only grows more troubling as the technology is added to healthcare practices and media reports find examples of potentially haywire insulin pumpsand pacemakers.

It's always better to legislate in anticipation of problems being created," Markey told me. "Butsometimes it actually takes the event to have occurred, which triggers the political outrage thatthen makes it possible to legislate."

But Markey was an outlier in Congress. The industry's favorite sound bite, about the need forgovernment to use a "light touch on the IOT, has become a clich among lawmakers.

Two committee hearings earlier this year on Capitol Hill were actually the first conductedspecifically on the Internet of Things. A few weeks later, the Senate unanimously adopteda nonbinding resolution that was all about the upsides of the Internet of Things.

The statement described a new business sector that could generate trillions of dollars in economicopportunity" and "empower consumers in nearly every aspect of their daily lives." Only once, nearthe end of the 450-word resolution, did a negative connotation come along: "The United Statesshould prioritize accelerating the development and deployment of the Internet of Things in a waythat recognizes its benefits, allows for future innovation, and responsibly protects against misuse."

Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), one of the resolution's lead sponsors, said in an interview that she'dpushed the measure because she wanted the Senate to be "proactive, for a change." It was an easylift getting it adopted, Senate aides said, though a few Republican conservatives posed reflexivequestions asking whether even this supportive, pro-development measure might not endup creating a precedent for the federal government to control the Internet.

Fischer said she's been drawn into the Internet of Things because of the way technology istransforming her state, from the agriculture fields where farmers use GPS in their tractors tosensors that help them determine moisture content, land grade and fertilizer needs. Consideringthe commercial goods being trucked in every direction across her state, she said she's also bullishon the benefits that the IOT can have for transportation.

In our interview, Fischer declined to name a single agency that she said was going too far right nowwith Internet of Things-specific regulations. But she also took credit for proposing legislation thatshe said prompted the FDA to back off regulating FitBit and other wearable devices.

Ask me what the Internet of Things is. My unusual answer is, I dont know, she said. But thereare people out there that experiment, and theyre innovative and theyre entrepreneurs and theyrecreating things like mad, and thats their job. And it should be our job in government to make iteasier for them to do their job and create and build without government immediately throwing uproadblocks.

The learning curve looks just as steep for everyone else in the Capitol. Texas GOP Rep. MichaelBurgess, chairman of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee with primary jurisdiction overthe FTC, told me he'd recently been over to the commission's offices for a meeting covering theInternet of Things. It was his first time there.

"I didnt realize they were so close," he said.

As for the Internet of Things Caucus, launched earlier this year by Issa and Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-

Wash.), a former Microsoft employee, it's only attracted 11 other members so far, and the firstofficial meeting wont be until July at the earliest. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), a caucus memberwho made millions founding an electronic greeting card company before being elected to Congress,misidentified the Democrat leading the group. Burgess said he didn't even know the new caucusexisted.

Asked why the group was only now forming, even though the IOT concept has been around formore than a decade, Issa, who from 2011 through 2014 vigorously investigated the Obamaadministration from his perch atop the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee,snapped, I was busy.

THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH hasn't exactly ignored the Internet of Things. At the extreme end isthe FTC, which has emerged as Americas chief enforcer on this topic. While it cant go aftertechnology firms specifically for privacy or security reasons, the commission has become a kind ofdata cop by using authority that dates to the Franklin Roosevelt administration to take oncompanies engaging in unfair or deceptive practices.

In 2013, the FTC launched its first Internet of Things-specific case against the security andtechnology firm called TRENDnet, saying the Los Angeles-based company didn't do enough toprotect its customers' private camera feeds hackers had posted links to live feeds of nearly 700 ofthe cameras showing babies sleeping in their cribs, children playing and adults going about theirdaily lives.

Using its enforcement powers, the FTC challenged a China-based developer of the mobileapplication BabyBus last December because it appeared to collect specific geolocation data onusers millions had downloaded the system without getting parental consent. And in February,it forced settlements with marketers of two mobile apps MelApp and Mole Detective forclaiming they could detect symptoms of melanoma, even in early stages.

The FTC in January also unveiled one of the most comprehensive government looks to date on theInternet of Things, with a staff-written report that urged tech companies to build security into theirproducts and services from the outset, to minimize data collection and give consumers more noticeand choice about how their data will be used. But the FTC analysis ducked questions about specificlaws that might be needed to handle this new frontier, instead supporting Obamas broader privacybill that has been stuck in Congress.

"I think were all in kind of an educational phase," Maureen Ohlhausen, a Republican FTCcommissioner appointed during the Obama era, said in an interview. "Its a little hard to sayanybody has a handle on all of it at this point.

The two agencies most actively writing rules on the Internet of Things also are going out of theirway to demonstrate that their intentions are not to stop the Internet of Things. At the FAA, Huertarecently boasted that his upcoming drone plan is "the most flexible regime for unmanned aircraft55 pounds or less that exists anywhere in the world.

At the Transportation Department, Secretary Anthony Foxx is speeding up NHTSA's schedule tocomplete regulations by the end of this year instead of 2016 that eventually would mandatecommunications equipment requiring all new vehicles to connect with one another. He made theannouncement during a recent visit to Silicon Valley, insisting during the stop that the rules wouldprevent deadly accidents and "eventually produce a car that drives itself better than a human beingcan."

Back in Washington, Foxx told me in a brief interview that the government's Internet of Thingsstrategy remained in its infancy.

Its all under construction, he said. Were trying to move faster. Were trying to be smart aboutit, and obviously with a primacy on safety, which is our mission. I think the future is bright fortechnology. Its just a matter of making sure the processes that we have built over the last 100 yearswork for the next 100 years."

Some of the other federal agencies haven't yet been forced to answer the regulatory questions,giving them a chance to hang back and defer to the market.

"It seems to me that maybe incentivizing and encouraging as opposed to regulating may be a newdynamic and something for government to begin thinking about in this 21st century, AgricultureSecretary Tom Vilsack said during a USDA-sponsored conference in February. With innovationand technology, anyway, it's something to think about."

The Energy Department seems to be taking a similar approach: encouraging, with a note ofcaution. Electric utility providers are deploying so-called Smart Grid technologies that compiledetailed information about a households energy use. Aware of the potential risks in holding suchsensitive data, the department earlier this year touted a voluntary code of conduct it created withindustry to help protect this information.

At the Commerce Department, the National Telecommunications & InformationAdministration has been leading public talks since 2013 to come up with voluntary rules forindustry as it develops facial recognition technology, though POLITICO Pros Tony Romm recentlyreported that privacy groups just bailed on the effort because they saw it as too industry-driven.

Several departments are trying to showcase how the Internet of Things would work for their own

missions. The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, is studying the viability of networksensors that can monitor dangerous pollutants including ozone, particulate matter and volatileorganic compounds. At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, scientistspartnered with industry, conservationists and academia are using acoustic buoys, real-time dataand historical migration metrics to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales. The HomelandSecurity Department just partnered with the Air Force Academy in search of ideas for wearableequipment for emergency first responders, including sensors and other items that link up voice anddata communications.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, another arm of the wide-ranging CommerceDepartment, may be thinking the most broadly about the Internet of Things. It has no regulatorypowers, but it is delving into the underlying technical structures that can help the different gadgetswork together. This points to another kind of government intervention, one that could help theindustry and consumers by creating order out of whats starting to become a commercial free-for-all.

What we want to promote is a coordinated national strategy for a globally interoperable Internetof Things. Having a local IOT doesnt make sense, Christopher Greer, director of NIST's SmartGrid and Cyber-Physical Systems program, told me in an interview.

ULTIMATELY, THE BUCK for most of these agencies stops with Obama's White House. TheDemocrat did win both of his terms using an unprecedented array of data and digital technology.But his record is mixed so far when it comes to tech-forward governing.

Under Obama's watch, leaker Edward Snowden exposed the post-9/11 National Security Agencyprogram that collected vast troves of metadata on Americans' telephone records. Obama'ssignature health care law collapsed at crucial moments because of website failures and a clunkydigital infrastructure. The Office of Personnel Management earlier this month disclosed it was thevictim of the worst hacking in U.S. government history.

The White House has had responses to all of those challenges, but it has yet to come up with anykind of coordinated strategy for what's ahead on the Internet of Things. Our overarching goal inthis space, a White House spokeswoman wrote me via email, is to encourage technologicaladvances that deliver great benefit for the American people, and to ensure that policy decisions areinformed by our best understanding of technology. This isnt an easy balance, and theres steadypressure on Obama from all sides. The FBI, for example, wants to have back-door access to seedecrypted data on smartphones a policy the tech industry vigorously opposes.

Obama's top advisers say they are still reviewing recommendations from that November 2014

report by the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, whichincluded calls for much greater coordination across federal agencies and departments, a NIST-written definition of what the Internet of Things is, and a more thorough accounting by the WhiteHouse Office of Management and Budget of how much federal money is spent on IOT security. Fornow, they also say they want to stay on the regulatory sidelines and largely let the privatesector run.

We look at this from a lens of playing a supportive role, Daniel Correa, a senior adviser forinnovation policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, recently told a panelat Microsoft's Washington, D.C., headquarters.

"Were not going to have a Department of the Internet of Things," added Tom Kalil, the deputypolicy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, in an interview. "Butwe can have a sense for where we are now, where wed like to be over the short, medium and longterm and what is a sensible division of labor based on the roles and responsibilities of differentagencies.

WHAT I CAME to realize, in the course of my reporting, is that theres an underlying mismatchbetween the way government handles issues and the way this new technology actually works.Government operates in silos in Congress, committees often fight one another for jurisdictionharder than Democrats clash with Republicans; all the agencies, departments and commissionsthat make up the federal executive branch maintain separate fiefdoms for everything fromagriculture, to defense, to transportation and energy.

The IOT is precisely the opposite. It is a freewheeling system of integrated objects and networks,growing horizontally, destroying barriers so that people and systems that never previouslycommunicated now can. Already, apps on a smartphone can log health information, control yourenergy use and communicate with your car a set of functions that crosses jurisdictions of at leastfour different government agencies.

What that means, many predict, is that the government and the tech industries will always bemoving in different directions.

I dont think were going to get a unification of jurisdictions, said Stan Crosley, director of theIndiana University Center for Law, Ethics and Applied Research in Health Information. "At best,we can get a harmonization, and I dont think thats possible."

Suggestions abound for what government should do. At the local level, nearly everyone agreesthat the feds need to help develop some basic standards so that the whole country can worktogether. Michael Mattmiller, Seattles chief technology officer, said techies in his city want to push

their IOT applications nationwide but need some basic federal coding rules in place first to makesure everyones speaking the same language something as simple as the number of fields in ahome address, for instance, could render a great piece of Seattle civic technology totally useless forChicago.

Issa and a couple other lawmakers said the Internet of Things would benefit from a blue-ribboncommission of experts from the ranks of industry, government, privacy and academia who canstudy the full suite of issues and report back with recommendations on legislative and regulatorypolicy fixes. I worry about commissions as just being make-work. But in this case, I think it would follow in agood tradition of commissions that would make a difference, said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.).

Fischer wants to see Congress put pen to paper writing the country's Internet of Things strategy.But to get there, she acknowledged she needs to help her colleagues out by pointing out to them allof the examples in their own everyday lives that involve the Internet of Things.

I should be better at that," she told me after I'd run through a list of all the different House andSenate panels that could conceivably be holding Internet of Things-focused hearings.

"Youre pointing things out that Im going, yeah, thats right. I'm on Armed Services and chair ofthe Emerging Threats Subcommittee, so we deal with cybersecurity. And yeah, theres a lot therethat my colleagues on Armed Services probably dont realize its the Internet of Things. So we needto be better messengers and get that vocabulary out there."

Markey praised the FTC for pushing ahead with Internet of Things cases. What's most needed now,he told me, was a level of White House leadership that hasn't yet emerged. Im not sure its beenelevated yet to the level that it should be in order to have a comprehensive plan that is articulatedand then understood by every agency," he said. "I think its a lot more scattershot.

Hill, the technology and policy expert tied to George Mason University, pointed out that he onceworked in a government agency that did exactly this kind of work. Called the Office of TechnologyAssessment, it was created in 1972 by Congress to navigate topical issues like energy and theenvironment, as well as a scary mix of Cold War-inspired science and technology questions. Withas many as 140 staffers at times and a budget that topped out at more than $20 million DefenseSecretary Ash Carter is also an alum the office produced more than 800 studies and reports oneverything from biotechnology to aerospace and military technology. But the office drewconservatives ire in part by questioning the Reagan administrations wisdom in pursuing the StarWars missile-defense system, and when Newt Gingrich and the 1994 GOP-led Congress came topower, they defunded the office (with support from Democrats like Nevada Sen. Harry Reid) and

effectively killed it.

The IOT, Hill told me, "would have been subject to an intensive examination from this office. Notnecessarily hostile, either. But it would have pointed out Im sure very early and very loudly thesecurity issues, the liability issues, potential problems with systems out of control or gettingcaptured by commercial interests. It would have also pointed out the great possibility forimprovement of health care, home management and personal security.

Hill said government's challenge in handling the Internet of Things remains so complicatedbecause of how government has treated the Internet itself its never quite settled on how toregulate it and partially defers to nonprofit international bodies. With the IOT, he said, thechallenges get even more complex.

Everyone from the DOE to the CIA to the NSA has got a place in this thing, Hill said, plus theFTC and the NIH and the public service and the State Department.

"I dont know of anything else like that in technology history," he added. "I think it may well be aunique beast.