HR 2644 Introduced – Internet Connected Device Industry

Earlier this month Rep. Latta (R,OH) introduced HR 2644, the State of Modern Application, Research, and Trends of (SMART) IoT Act. The bill would require the Commerce Department to conduct a study of the internet-connected devices industry. The bill is similar in purpose to HR 6032 from the 115^th Congress. The earlier bill passed in the House, but no action was taken in the Senate.

Differences

This bill is a re-write of the version passed in the House in the last session. The description of the study in §2(a) was completely re-written. The new description focuses the study on activities of the Federal government that support/regulate the internet connected device industry. All references to industry standard in the earlier bill have been removed. The only remaining non-governmental reference in the study description is a stripped down reference to ‘public-private partnerships’. Additionally, the new language also removes the requirement to “identify all regulations, guidelines, mandatory standards, voluntary standards, and other policies implemented by each of the Federal agencies” found in §2(a)(6) in the original bill.

Moving Forward

Lata is a subcommittee Chair in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the committee to which this bill was assigned for consideration, so he likely has enough influence to see this bill considered in Committee in this session. As with HR 6032, there is nothing in the bill that would draw any serious opposition and the new bill is likely to receive the same bipartisan support that early version received in the 115^th Congress.

Commentary

I still have the same objections to this bill as I did to the earlier version. Most certainly the continued use of the extremely vague and overly inclusive definition of ‘internet connected device’ is going to make any report on the topic on the topic next to useless.