@Aquinus, IBM is doing what every organization that I have been a part of because it's easier and cheaper to build for the most secure and put everything in that basket rather than to keep things isolated and managed separately. In addition to that, we have a trend in the world right now when it comes to privacy in that many other countries may soon adopt similar laws and IBM might as well be pro-active.
I would recommend that if you do continue with this project that you do so as part of an LLC or similar and put the onus on an entity that you control, rather than your person. The price for data is about to go up, and so will the cost of liability.
What I would have preferred to see IBM do is to keep machine stats separate from people/users and left everything open. Thus, you could trend machines, and the owners of said machines would know which ones were theirs, and then it would be entirely up to the owners to enable trending/sharing of their statistics. Having not read the new legal article, I may be off base with possibilities.
