How can we balance openness of environmental data with privacy and ethical aspects? In the AD4GD project Stefan Schiffner from the European Centre for Certification and Privacy (ECCP) and his team are responsible for overseeing this on all the data we process and the interoperability strategies that we design. As they explain, when we collect environmental data from Internet of Things (IoT) devices, for example, there are sometimes people close to the devices and therefore risks regarding their freedom of information and privacy.
« We can not only claim that we want to be ethical and then do nothing, but we need to ensure that we are compliant to this. »
The ECCP is an international entity specialized on certification processes and private data protection. Their research focuses on how to certify IoT processes in terms of privacy. In fact, they own a certification squeme under de General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act.
Due to their professional experience in the sector, they have two different responsabilities in the AD4GD project. First of all, they are in charge of legal compliance. The use of IoT devices has a direct impact on freedom for information which in Europe requires that people responsible for this kind of tasks follow the GDPR rules “even if you say that you are working for the good”, explains Stefan Schiffner. There are further regulations as de NIS, the e-privacy directives or the future AI Act that will be coming in the future and may have an impact the AD4GD actions. On the other side, ECCP is responsible of compliance regarding our own rules and ethical setup.
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