Commission investigates right to 'chip silence'

The European Commission is to investigate whether or not peoplehave the right to disappear from the ever-more pervasive digitalnetworks that surround them.

The Commission has expressed concern about the privacyimplications of personally-identifying technologies such as radiofrequency identification (RFID) chips. It said that it is importantto discuss whether or not people should be able to disappear fromnetworks.

"The Commission will launch a debate on the technical and legalaspects of the ‘right to silence of the chips’, which has beenreferred to under different names by different authors andexpresses the idea that individuals should be able to disconnectfrom their networked environment at any time," said a Commissionconsultation paper.

The consultation will form part of an action plan published bythe Commission outlining how it will legislate and regulate thecoming phenomenon it calls the 'internet of things'. This is thename it gives to the increasing automatic communication betweendevices and tags that are forming complex networks aroundcitizens.

"Every day we see new examples of applications that connectobjects to the internet and each other: from cars connected totraffic lights that fight congestion, to home appliances connectedto smart power grids and energy metering that allows people to beaware of their electricity consumption or connected pedestrianfootpaths that guide the visually impaired," said Viviane Reding,EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

"The promise of this new development of the internet is aslimitless as the number of objects in our daily life it involves.However, we need to make sure that Europeans, as citizens, asentrepreneurs and as consumers, lead the technology, rather thanthe technology leading us," she said.

The Commission believes that existing trends towards theinterconnection of objects as well as people using networks willcontinue.

"These can be simple everyday items like yogurt pots that recordthe temperature along their supply chain, or two prescription drugsthat warn patients of a possible incompatibility," said itsstatement outlining its plans. "Or they can be more sophisticated,such as health monitoring or recycling systems…with everyonesurrounded daily by several thousand objects, this interconnectionof physical objects will amplify the profound effects that moderncommunications are having on our society."

The Commission has outlined the areas in which it will takeaction to try to ensure that any new object networks do not trampleon the rights of the individuals who interact with them.

Its first objective is to create a set of principles which itwants to underlie the 'internet of things'. It wants to make surethat privacy and data protection are considered from the outset inthe building of any systems, and wants to ensure change ismeasured. It will produce statistics on the use of RFID chipsstarting in December of this year, it said.