The Device Chronicle interviews Philippe Le Berre, Chief Technology Officer at 360ofme. 360ofme is an ethical data exchange provider focused on consent and identity management. It helps businesses create different services to collect and process data ethically.
Problem space around data exchange and privacy
Philippe begins by regaling Warren Buffett's famous quote: “Trust is like the air we breathe – when it's present, nobody notices; when it's absent, everybody notices.” The critical commodity in the world is trust, especially when it concerns personal data. We need to find a way to ensure trust so stakeholders can collect and use personal data appropriately and distribute it to deliver services. It is a critical foundational pillar of our modern economy.
Philippe continues, that whenever there has been a new commodity to trade, society must organize clearing houses and mechanisms. It is the same with data as a commodity. We need an ethical data exchange where we look at how to ensure trust and appropriate delivery of the data required to deliver the desired services to the customers.
Challenges for user data privacy and content consent within automotive and smart mobility
Apply the notion of trust to a vehicle, and you will have a trusted vehicle. Phillippe says “You're a passenger or see your children entering the vehicle. You will ask: Can I trust this vehicle? Can I trust this driver?” The notion of a trusted vehicle increases, especially as it becomes equipped with more sensors, cameras, and other IoT components for activity and environmental detection.
Philippe believes that a trusted passenger vehicle entails security: “Without cybersecurity, we'll have a problem with everything in the vehicle. A hacker could transform and compromise everything in it. There's a question of privacy because the OEMs are trying to deliver tailored and customized experiences so that people like the vehicle and the experience within it. And to make that happen, you need personal data. How do we properly ensure the stakeholders can deliver the data with privacy layers to enforce that?”
Philippe also stresses the importance of having medical health data to ensure safety; this is seen frequently in use cases in after-crash care. “The simple notion of having the blood type of the people in the vehicle is vital information that emergency services need. And how do we make that data available? Because it's linked to personal data and health data.”
There's also a complexity to the connected vehicle in that you have different levels of services. Digital music and audio services such as Spotify, and Apple are across all the brands. If you go down one level, there are more specific services such as Waze. You will have a one vehicle brand distributing digital services for a single content provider across all its different models. Or you may have model-specific content service provision. These tailored experiences require personal data. “Notably, the first one is, did you subscribe? Did you consent to that service? And then you have other notions you must factor in such as am I your passenger? Am I the owner? Am I your driver? Am I just a rider because it's an Uber?” So, with all this complexity, the vehicle is an exciting setting because to make quality and tailored services delivery work and bring the appropriate level of safety and security, you need quite a lot of personal data. 360ofme aims to get a standardized solution to enable the industry as a collective to solve data exchange at scale because it is clear privacy is a systematic challenge. No one stakeholder can also solve this challenge alone.
What is the cultural and technical proposition for how the automotive and mobility ecosystem can address this challenge?
Philippe explains that 360ofme is working with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Covesa, and all the key industry bodies because it realizes that no single start-up company or corporation, including automotive OEMs, can manage this customer data flow across services independently of each other in silo.
Data protection laws differ from country to country, and from state to state in the US. So it's a systemic problem. 360ofme believes that we need an ecosystem of trusted third party that will act as the person's data wallet. “That's where you put your data. That's where we'll broker and get your consent to subscribe to the service. So this is a trusted third party that, on behalf of the person, has personal data and has what the person has consented to. And then, when the consumer gets into a vehicle or a mobility solution as an individual, they can say, "This is my identity, and my personally trusted third party is this company. Then, that will enable the consumer to configure the experience, set all the services they have subscribed to, and broker any access to personal data with the appropriate data minimization. Phillippe says that standards and standardized APIs are needed to make this vision happen. Cooperation and collaboration with industry partners will enable this. In the meantime, 360ofme will offer the first implementation leading the way.
Regarding the technical proposition, Philippe believes that a “HTTP type” protocol for personal data is needed; one that can interoperate, allowing consumers to use their identity safely and securely. “We see so much going on with digital identity, especially in Europe, across my mobile experiences, between a consumer’s vehicle and another consumer's vehicle, just because one consumer picked up an electric scooter somewhere. And so that's where 360ofme wants to go: link to the person's identity and their data. The real-time processing of all the data from the telemetry and everything else ensures that privacy is enforced according to the person's consent.”
If viewers are interested in learning more, visit 360ofme.com, or they can reach out to Philippe directly by email at philippe.leberre@360ofme.com or indeed reach Philippe on LinkedIn and get in touch to learn more.