The ‘Internet Of Things’ – 10 Data Protection And Privacy Challenges

The Article 29 Working Party ("WP") – a collection of 28 EU national data protection authorities – has recently published its opinion on the 'Internet of Things'. With an estimated 30 billion devices to be connected to the internet of things by 2020, the WP has considered the privacy challenges arising from this evolving sector. The WP views the internet of things as posing a number of personal data protection and privacy challenges, including the risk of security breaches and of profiling or surveillance. This post considers these challenges. Next week, we will look at the recommendations made by the WP to tackle these challenges.

What is the Internet of Things?

The 'internet of things' ("IoT") is an odd and somewhat new phrase. While the IoT covers an extensive range of issues such as 'smart cities', 'smart transportation' and M2M (machine to machine) communications, the WP focused on the existing user-facing devices, such as wearable computing;