The IoT sensors market is forecast to reach $22.5 billion by 2023, up from $5.28 billion by year-end 2018, reported Marketsandmarkets Thursday. Drivers include increased use of sensors in IoT devices, plummeting costs, technological advancements, introduction of 3rd Generation Partnership Project Release 13 and Release 14 specifications, rising demand for connected devices and wearables and a need for real-time computing in IoT applications, it said.

Though Tesla didn’t keep the promise CEO Elon Musk made a year ago to complete its first “coast-to-coast” autonomous drive using Autopilot last year (see 1708030018), the automaker has that capability for demonstrations, he said on a Wednesday evening earnings call. If Tesla were to “pick a specific route and then write code to really make that route work, we could do a coast-to-coast route drive, but that would be kind of gaming the system,” said Musk. He doesn’t want to take the team away from building on the “fundamental safety of the existing features.” It's teaching Autopilot to “do things like recognize traffic lights and stop signs and make hard right turns and that kind of thing, but it's not at the safety level that's considered OK for release,” he said. After quarterly results, the stock Thursday closed up 16 percent at $349.54.

Sonos shares closed at $19.91 Thursday, a 24 percent increase from the opening price on its first day public. The company whose board includes ex-FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski had targeted $17-$19 to raise $264 million (see 1807230060). Competition is rising, including from the companies whose content and voice control platforms Sonos is relying on to carry it into the next voice control age of audio. It cited as a risk factor dependency on companies including Amazon and Apple, saying success with voice control increasingly will depend on willingness of technology partners with more financial resources to continue to promote and enhance Sonos products, "many of which sell or may develop products that compete with ours.” Senior Vice President-Product Marketing and Collaborations Allen Mask downplayed that risk with us Thursday, saying Sonos views itself as complementary to Amazon, Apple and Google. “Big tech companies have a very different core business than ours,” with Sonos standing apart as an open system with “freedom of choice,” he said. “We welcome all voice assistants, we welcome all streaming services, we welcome companies to build on top of our platform.” The newly public company outsources most manufacturing to contract manufacturer Inventec, which makes products for the company and its competitors at facilities in China. Tariff threats (see 1808020067) are "top of mind for us, as it is for everybody across the consumer electronics industry,” Mask told us. Sonos is “not happy about the discussions being had." The company is working with CTA to combat the proposed tariffs, and Mask noted “if and when tariffs come down, we feel hopeful.” The “premium nature” of the brand should leave the company less exposed so it’s not affected materially long term, he said.

Vonage bought from Telefonica in a $35 million deal TokBox, for integrating live video into websites, mobile apps and IoT devices. It "brings a workforce of skilled technologists," said Vonage CEO Alan Masarek Wednesday. His company cited IDC forecasts the U.S. programmable video market will more than double by 2022 to about $7 billion.

FTC members voted 5-0 on Privacy Act notice changes that would let it transmit records to another agency that might be handling the investigation during a data breach, it said Tuesday. As suggested by the Office of Management and Budget, this “more specifically addresses harm to individuals and expands the concept to make clear that it is not limited to identity theft or financial harm,” said the commission.

The Department of Homeland Security launched the National Risk Management Center, an access point for defending against cyberthreats, said Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen Tuesday. Instead of calling 911, companies and individuals should call the center when they believe they are under cyberattack, she said at the National Cybersecurity Summit in New York. “We will be able to take a piece of intelligence, and with the help of the private sector, ask ourselves ‘so what’ and determine what we’re going to do about it together.”

D-Link's first Built on Thread-certified border router uses Silicon Labs’ wireless SoC and supports Thread, Zigbee, Bluetooth 5, Bluetooth mesh, among others, they said Monday.

The American Civil Liberties Union’s “flawed” methodology in criticizing Amazon’s Rekognition for racial bias was a setback for legitimate use of facial identification (see 1807270040), blogged Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Vice President Daniel Castro and Research Assistant Michael McLaughlin Monday. “It is unclear what error rate and level of bias groups such as the ACLU are willing to accept,” they wrote. “The standard should not be perfection, but rather better than the rates humans achieve today. And by that metric, facial recognition technology is clearly a positive step forward.” Amazon says ACLU’s results could be improved by following best practices on boosting confidence thresholds from 80 to 95 percent.

The EU has no intention of suspending the U.S.-EU Privacy Shield, despite a European Parliament committee’s recommendation, said British Conservative European Parliament Member Syed Kamall this week. The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, and the European Council, made up of EU heads of state, aren't on board with the Committee of Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs’ motion, Kamall said on a scheduled weekend telecast of C-SPAN’s The Communicators: “They’ve got too many tech companies in their own countries that want to continue those data flows.” Kamall also discussed tech “envy” in the EU, where U.S. tech dominance is drawing the attention of EU authorities. This attitude partly fuels government efforts to extract taxes from these companies, he said, suggesting European companies sell out to U.S. entities when they develop promising products. Kamall also discussed the evolution of social media, saying when Facebook started, people weren't as keen on data use and security: “We’re evolving from being initially very enthusiastic about some of these free services online. We’re now starting to ask the question: Now hold on a minute, what happens to my data? And I think that’s the same on both sides of the Atlantic.”

Amazon’s facial identification product Rekognition falsely matched 28 members of Congress with criminal mug shots, and lawmakers of color were disproportionately mismatched, said the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation Thursday. They included six members of the Congressional Black Caucus, which recently wrote CEO Jeff Bezos. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., was misidentified in a database of 25,000 public arrest photos. “Congress should press for a federal moratorium on the use of face surveillance until its harms, particularly to vulnerable communities, are fully considered,” said ACLU Legislative Counsel Neema Singh Guliani. An Amazon spokesperson emailed that the results could probably be improved by following best practices on setting the confidence thresholds used in the test, from 80 percent confidence to 95 percent. “In real world scenarios, Amazon Rekognition is almost exclusively used to help narrow the field and allow humans to expeditiously review and consider options using their judgement [sic] (and not to make fully autonomous decisions), where it can help find lost children, restrict human trafficking, or prevent crimes,” said the spokesperson. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Reps. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., and Mark DeSaulnier, D-Calif., wrote Bezos Thursday on “serious concerns … about the dangers facial recognition can pose to privacy and civil rights, especially when it is used as a tool of government surveillance.”