Title: LEGAL ASPECTS

The deployment of RFID applications raises several legal questions regarding privacy and data protection, as RFID tags can be used as the medium for collecting, transmitting or storing personal data, as well as tracing devices for the location of natural persons. In this chapter we will set out the legal aspects relating to data protection in RFID applications, in order to define the borderlines for their ‘Holistic Privacy Framework’, examining also what kind of tracking and tracing possibilities arise from the use of an RFID enabled device or from RFID implants.  

In the pages that follow it will be examined how far RFID applications raise privacy problems from the legal perspective. For this, we will analyse if, to what extent and in which way the European current legal framework on data protection applies to RFID applications. It will particularly be looked into when the information stored in an RFID tag qualifies as personal data (i.e. whether there is a privacy issue) and falls under the field of application of the data protection directive (see section ) and how far the ePrivacy Directive applies (Section ). Furthermore, Section will discuss legal issues concerning RFID that are under debate and/or not straightforward to be answered. Finally, related findings of FIDIS deliverables D7.7 (RFID, Ambient Intelligence and Profiling) and D7.9 (Ambient Law) will be summarised in Section .