Is Privacy Regulation Slowing Down or Enabling the Wide Adoption of Pervasive Systems? Panel Summary

In the last years we have witnessed large scale data privacy violations mostly due to security issues or to unauthorised use and communication of personal data. Among many events, millions of Yahoo e-mail accounts and Facebook private profiles were violated. Mobile and pervasive technology and services have a role in this scenario, since they introduce new devices with possible hardware and software security holes, new communication protocols, new types of personal data, and a new scale for the amount of data being collected. Location data of individuals collected through mobile devices is a natural example, and video imaging and speech collected in our homes by smart appliances and toys is another.