Deliverable 7.2 represents a genuine attempt to crystallise the multi-disciplinary nature of the FIDIS Network of Excellence in a document assessing the many facets of profiling, with contributions coming from across a wide spectrum of disciplines.

Profiling is a powerful, critical and worrying technology because it is probably the only way that massive volumes of data about individual and group behaviour can be mined, whether for nefarious or benign purposes. Ever larger volumes of data have been the holy grail of generations of social scientists, medical researchers and technologists, and with profiling alongside new data-gathering technologies such data is available with the means to mine it for all its value. This deliverable examines how different approaches to profiling are taken, reviewing along the way some of the different technology contexts in which it can be used. Though matters of privacy and security loom behind every corner, the main focus of this deliverable is not on such issues. Subsequent deliverables will move into this. Clearly, with its multiple applications in marketing, law enforcement and surveillance, e-medicine and e-health - to name just some, there exist currently many avenues along which profiling might progress, but unless the consumers and citizens of today and tomorrow have more knowledge of the actual workings of this technology, they will not be able to make informed decisions about how to respond when they are increasingly importuned for their personal data in the future. This report hopes to make a useful contribution to the vital task of explaining how profiling may impact the life of citizens and consumers in the coming years.

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This document considers some of the wider aspects of privacy and security in the AmI environment as these are affected by profiling techniques and methods. It has been shown that by the very nature of the AmI space such issues are prevalent. Although it is unclear exactly how the AmI environment will develop, and indeed how it will be accepted by society as a whole, it is predicted that in some form AmI will appear in our everyday lives. However, AmI space requires a high level of profiling to be successful. Solutions for issues of privacy and security are usually located at a technological and a legal level, both implicating the social and the cultural. In this deliverable a first exploration of technological solutions and a first extensive exploration of relevant EU law is presented. As to the technological level, the report discusses two privacy-enhancing techniques to provide pseudonymous customised services. In these models, the user is in control of his own data, and has an Identity Management Device (IMD) that manages his data, profiles and preferences. The IMD presents the user preferences to ambient intelligence devices in order to obtain personalised services. The first technique is based on anonymous credentials, and it may not be appropriate to be implemented in many ambient intelligence environments, as it requires costly resources. The second technique is adapted from the field of targeted advertising. It is cheap to implement, and ambient intelligence devices with low storage capacity and computation power could easily implement it. As to the legal level, an extensive survey is made of the EU Data Protection Directive and other relevant sources of EU law, such as the Privacy and Electronic Data Communications Directive, and E-Commerce Legislation, Consumer Protection Legislation. This survey, focused on relevant implications for both group profiling and personalised profiling, and implications at the level of the collection of data, the construction of profiles and at the level of their application, should serve as a first inventory on which subsequent deliverables can build.

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Profiling: Implications for Democracy and Rule of Law

The possible effects of profiling technologies should be considered from a less policy-oriented perspective than may be usual within NoE’s. This deliverable has chosen to raise some fundamental issues at the intersection of law, political theory and human identity – all related to the advance of profiling technologies. At this moment, highly sophisticated data mining techniques are becoming available to corporations and governments because of the ever cheaper and ubiquitous hardware and software that surrounds us. These technologies provide profiles with a flux of instant-categorisations that will be adjusted in real time if the Ambient Intelligent vision comes through. How will these instant-categorisations affect individual citizens and their sense of self? Will they be aware of this impact and does it matter if they are not? Should we worry about collection and processing of personal data, or only about sensitive personal data, or is this a crucial error, because profiling technologies construct intimate knowledge out of trivial data? Can abuse be prevented by counting on the human decency or ‘good practices’ of those in power, or do individual citizens need legal and/or technological tools to enforce such decency if necessary? Democracy and rule of law cannot be taken for granted; they are indeed historical artefacts that need constant maintenance and reconstruction, to deal with the dynamics of a changing world. It may even be the case that the proliferation of information will clog efficient and effective government and fair, competitive market infrastructures unless profiling technologies provide the means to select relevant information from irrelevant information, in order to build knowledge instead of just collect a meaningless abundance of data. The question will be how to reconstruct the checks and balances in the face of the new developments. The report begins with a careful exploration of democracy and rule of law. It continues by laying out possible implications of profiling and discussing tools to recreate checks and balances. After that, four critical replies are presented that deliver short, critical discussions of the issues at stake. In the conclusions the arguments are summarised and provided with a reply to critics.

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The second workshop of the WP 7 titled ‘AmI, RFID and Profiling’ (D7.6) was organized at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel on January 20th as preparation for deliverable 7.7. This report records the participants to the workshop and their presentations and includes the relevant issues and the proposed structure of the report on ‘AmI, RFID and Profiling’, discussed during the meeting. On top of that it summarises the decisions taken during the workshop on the contributions to and content of the report.

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The target of this study is to provide a multifocal perspective on the workingsof radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies, integrating technical,social and legal perspectives. As this deliverable is part of the work package onprofiling, it regards RFID as an enabling technology for Ambient Intelligence,the ‘Internet of Things’ or the age of ‘everyware’. Ambient Intelligence (AmI)implies a real time adaptive environment in which most adaptive decisions aretaken by machines in a process of machine to machine communication. Thesedecisions are based on what is called autonomic profiling, severely restrictinghuman intervention, while being in need of a continuous and dynamic flow ofinformation. This raises many of issues that need to be anticipated and dealtwith. This deliverable will provide a descriptive analysis to prepare the way formore fundamental research into the possibilities to integrate legal andtechnological solutions and more specific research into the development of aholistic privacy framework for RFID technologies. Both are taken on in thethird work plan of the FIDIS NoE.

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The third workshop of Work package 7 on "A Vision on Ambient Law" (D7.8) was organized at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel on January 26th 2007 as preparation for deliverable 7.9. This report records the decisions taken during the workshop regarding the relevant issues, and takes note of the proposed structure of the report on "A Vision on Ambient Law", as agreed during the meeting. It also contains a list of participants, the program of the workshop, the slides of the presentations and the working document that was sent round for discussion.

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This report addresses the research question: can law as embodied in the futureAmbient Intelligence architecture - Ambient Law - safeguard the core valuesof privacy and non-discrimination, while at the same time helping to realise thepotential of Ambient Intelligence? This question is answered by analysingAmbient Intelligence and the role of Ambient Law therein from a conceptual,legal, and technical perspective.

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Deliverable D7.10 aims to detect literature that moves beyond juxtaposition of different disciplinary perspectives. It provides the starting point for a growing selection of literature references in identity-related areas, such as RFID, Biometrics, Profiling and Ambient Intelligence with a long perspective of being dynamic. A wiki workpad page is created on the internal portal in order to provide a discussion forum. Over time it will not exceed 100 references. As such, only the references which are perceived of highest quality and with a strong multidisciplinary point of view will be included in the selection. The creation and maintenance of the selection is based on the Reference Manager Software, which allows people to consult, search and export the literature selection.

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The fourth workshop of WP 7 (D7.11) was organized on 21.02.2008 at the
Vrije Universiteit Brussel to prepare deliverable D7.12 on Biometric
Behavioural Profiling (BBP) and Transparency Enhancing Tools (TETs).

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