Legal safeguards for privacy and data protection in ambient intelligence

To get the maximum benefit from ambient
intelligence (AmI), we need to anticipate and react to
possible drawbacks and threats emerging from the new
technologies in order to devise appropriate safeguards. The
SWAMI project took a precautionary approach in its
exploration of the privacy risks in AmI and sought ways to
reduce them. It constructed four ''dark scenarios'' showing
possible negative implications of AmI, notably for privacy
protection. Legal analysis of the depicted futures showed
the shortcomings of the current legal framework in being
able to provide adequate privacy protection in the AmI
environment. In this paper, the authors, building upon their
involvement in SWAMI research as well as the further
advancement of EU privacy analysis, identify various
outstanding issues regarding the legal framework that still
need to be resolved in order to deal with AmI in an equitable
and efficacious way. This article points out some of
the lacunae in the legal framework and postulates several
privacy-specific safeguards aimed at overcoming them.