How the Internet of things could stop the next Volkswagen scandal in its tracks

Volkswagen is still reeling from the revelations that it lied to U.S. regulators and pumped nearly 1 million tons of extra pollutants into the air by installing software onto its cars to fool emissions tests. Now regulators, legislators and others are wondering how to prevent such a scandal from happening again. Open source software has been a suggested salve. So has random testing.But I think these are part of two bigger trends that will come together to prevent these sort of shenanigans going forward—the Internet of things and the development of a maker culture. The Internet of things and its proliferation of data gathering sensors that are connected to the cloud and to each other combined with an increasing number of people who are comfortable building their own gear to experiment with the world around them will create an environment of constant scrutiny.