The EU ministerial meeting in Nice was the first to be fully dedicated to the Internet of the future and will feed into the conclusions of the next EU Telecoms Council at the end of November.
France, the current holder of the rotating EU Presidency, wants to introduce new privacy rights for consumers.
Among these is the establishment of the right to deactivate "radio frequency identification tags" (RFIDs), a kind of barcode which is making its way into consumer goods and objects.
Smart tags are at the heart of the 'Internet of Things'. They allow relevant and dynamic information about an object to be stored, such as tyre pressure during a car journey. By using radio frequencies, the information can be read at a distance by special devices. If the pressure is too low, a remote computer informs the driver.
The problem is how the information is used. Unauthorised people might access the data and extract a profile of the user, which could then be used for commercial or even criminal purposes. Technological developments might also allow the localisation of an object, and therefore its owner, in space and time.
New 'Big Brother'?
In Japan, the practice has already begun to spread. Japanese parents concerned about their children's safety embed RFID tags in their bags or their clothes, and are automatically informed of their kids' movements by text message.
Faced with concerns about the emergence of a new, all-powerful Big Brother, EU authorities are calling for a more cautious approach. Hence the call for the right to deactivate tags: according to supporters of this approach, retailers should be compelled to inform customers about the potential presence of an RFID tag in a product and block the embedded chips if the customer requests it.
Tracing products in the supply chain
But industries in favour of the technology argue that the tags could also bring enormous benefits. For example, retrieving dangerous products from the market could be made faster and easier, as was proven recently by the scandal in China involving tainted baby milk.
The environment could also benefit, proponents say. Today, companies can use RFID tags to trace products in their supply chains. Tomorrow, products could be traced beyond the point of sale and be recalled, repaired and finally recycled in the appropriate manner.
As is often the case, the answer may well rest in between the two arguments. At the moment, deactivating a tag is a one-way process. It is afterwards usually impossible to activate it again. To avoid losing the potential benefits of a widespread Internet of Things, Europe is pushing for a new generation of tags, which would be switched on and off intermittently at the consumer's behest. In this scenario, control of privacy would reside in the hands of the user, provided that citizens were correctly informed.
