Partly, this connects back to the notice question.
How do you give people notice about what you're going to do with their data,
if you don't know what you're going to do with their data because
you don't know what you might be able to do with it?
Let's just say you're a medical researcher and you're collecting
blood samples for a study and then six years later,
it turns out this brand new technology would allow you to go back to
that dataset and do some pretty incredible things.
We might want that researchers to be able to do that.
That informed consent on the front end,
how does it adequately tell people,
hey in six years we might learn about a new way to use your data,
can we go ahead and do it?
That is a tricky question that's been grappled with in the medical space for a while.
It seems to me that it's both harder and easier in this context.
Harder in the sense that it really, as you say,
it really is the case that these devices can change like many cars now,
like our phones, the manufacturer could push out
an update that would change the kinds of things the device can do.
And that might change the kind of notice that you would want to provide on the front end.
The thing that makes it easier is that because we're all now so connected,
it's a lot easier for the manufacturer of the device to
stay in touch with the people who are using the device.
And so, it's easier for them to get consent as they go.
The same way that you download an update for your phone and sometimes you'll get
Terms of Service that change and they'll say given
the new things that we're doing with this latest version of the software,
we want you to agree to this change.
So you can imagine a medical device manufacturers saying,
we've implemented a new feature,
we would like you to decide whether you want this feature.
Here are the things that it does.
And round two of informed consent begins.