Privacy Risk Area Assessment Tool for Audio Monitoring ? from legal complexity to practical

• Author: Sébastien Ziegler & Papa Moustapha Kémo Sonko
• Pages: 138-147

JICLT

Journal of International Comm ercial Law and Technology

Vol. 9, No.3 (2014)

138

Privacy Risk Area Assessment Tool for Audio

Monitoring – from legal complexity to practical

applications

Sébastien Ziegler

&

Papa Moustapha Kémo Sonko

Mandat International

3 chemin Champ-Baron

1209 Geneva, Switzerland

www.mandint.org

sziegler@mandint.org

&

EAR-IT European Research project

www.ear-it.eu

Abstract: The Privacy Risk Area Assessment Tool (PRAAT) for audio monitoring

has been developed in the frame of EAR-IT, a European research project exploring the

potential of audio monitoring for smart buildings and s mart cities. The project addresses

several privacy related iss ues in different countries and contexts, including outdoor and

indoor audio monitoring. By involving real end-users in different legal environments, the

project has to be very careful in respecting the privacy rights and has to make sure th at its

experiments are compliant with the a complex web of international, European and national

obligations. Based on a detailed legal analysis, the authors have elaborated a Pri vacy Risk

Area Assessment Tool ( PRAAT) for audio monitoring. It has been designed to be user-

friendly for users with limited legal background, such as researchers, public administrations

and other interested stake holders in evaluating the level of legal risk bound to any project

of audio monitoring deployment.

I. Introduction

The EA R-IT is a 3- year FP7 European research project on audio m onitoring through the Internet of

Things. It e xplores the potential of audio monitoring with Non Line-of-Sight (NLOS) and multipurpose

sensing. It explores such applications in two test beds with real end-users in Spain and Switzerland, with

indoor and outdoor experiments. However, the developed technology and research outcomes should be

relevant for any European country. Audio monitoring is implicitly interacting with privacy rights that

must be seriously addressed and considered in t he frame of the project. In this context, t he present article

presents the results of a legal analysis of privacy risks related to audio monitoring as well as a practical

and user friendly tool intending to reduce the risks of breaching privacy rights obligations when

deploying audio monitoring. The outcomes of the project will be shared with the research community and

used by other projects, such as IoT6 1 addressing the potential of IPv6 for the future Internet of Things.

1.1 Audio monitoring and Privacy

Audio monitoring can contribute to turn cities and buildings into smarter environments. It can help saving

energy, protecting people and improving the end-users comfort. However, it can impact privacy rights in

different ways. According to the technology used and its level of granularity, an audio monitoring system

can generate and collect personal data, including private communications.

Privacy is a complex and evolving concept. The perception of privacy may vary from one society to

another, from one period of time to another, and from one individual to another. Moreover, several

1 IoT6 European project: www.iot6.eu