

Germany Moves Away from U.S.-Dominated IoT Standards Groups - yahliwharton
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/03/18/germany-moves-away-from-us-dominated-iot-standards-groups/?mod=ST1

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legulere
It probably will be a failure just like DeMail. I have a pretty bad outlook
for the future of our country.

~~~
macco
Why?

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DasIch
Large infrastructure projects in Germany usually fail, projects involving the
internet or technology especially so.

If there is such a thing as a most wrong stereotype, german efficiency is it.

~~~
makeitsuckless
Which is why Germany has one of the best infrastructures, both physical and
electronic, in the Western world?

If there is such a thing as a most right stereotype, it's how the Silicon
Valley worshiping non-Americans on HN deny the successes and strengths of
their own country.

Germany is a, if not _the_ leading country in industrial standardization, and
especially in the current climate most of the world will prefer to follow
Germany's lead over the politically and ideologically compromised American
industry.

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npalli
Large public works projects are a problem in Germany.

[http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/disastrous-
publ...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/disastrous-public-works-
projects-in-germany-a-876856.html)

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xnull6guest
Surprised not to see comments in here about the use of international standards
to fix markets in the favor of one country's exports (versus another's) and
for the associated backdooring of technology and standards.

"The agencies, the documents reveal, have adopted a battery of methods in
their systematic and ongoing assault on what they see as one of the biggest
threats to their ability to access huge swathes of internet traffic – "the use
of ubiquitous encryption across the internet".

Those methods include covert measures to ensure NSA control over setting of
international encryption standards..." \-
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-
encryp...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-
codes-security)

"Simultaneously, the N.S.A. has been deliberately weakening the international
encryption standards adopted by developers. One goal in the agency’s 2013
budget request was to “influence policies, standards and specifications for
commercial public key technologies,” the most common encryption method." \-
[http://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-
campaign-t...](http://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-campaign-to-
crack-undermine-internet-encryption)

The Snowden leaks themselves have the GCHQ congratulating the NSA in frank
terms for controlling and exporting international standards, noting how it has
driven great gains for the US.

Given that Germany was one of the victims (including the companies mentioned
in the article) of standards-based cryptographic subvertion - the only suprise
in this article was that it took Germany this long to announce their own
initiative.

One can also surmise this as an indicator that the NSA is back to the usual
and that IoT standards are being actively influenced for sabotage.

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jpfr
> For machines to communicate over the web–essentially sending data from
> sensors back and forth from cloud-based servers—there needs to be a standard
> software protocol.

For IoT in general, there will be very fragmented protocols.

For _industrial_ use cases, the clear winner is IEC62541, aka OPC Unified
Automation [1]. There is no real alternative, so that issue is basically
already settled. And from a technical point of view, its actually quite good.

[1] [https://opcfoundation.org/about/opc-technologies/opc-
ua/](https://opcfoundation.org/about/opc-technologies/opc-ua/)

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pokoleo
"You knew what I was when you picked me up," said the snake as it slithered
away.

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alricb
FWIW, they call it "Industrie 4.0": www.plattform-i40.de/

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niche
W3C Multimodal Interaction standards

~~~
Sanddancer
Not everything that needs interoperability can, nor should, use HTTP/HTML. For
me, IoT includes very small devices still with only a few K of RAM, and
requiring an HTTP/HTML stack in amongst everything else will just serve to
push up prices and add needless complexity.

