Ethical/Legal

Wearables, like smartwatches, can hold considerable amounts of data and their increased market presence has raised various controversial and data privacy concerns, including identity theft, profiling, discrimination, and stalking. However, wearable users are apparently willing to provide their personal data in exchange for the benefits of having a round-the-clock analysis of their health. But is the data held in smartwatches considered as ‘personal data’ within the legal definition? According to the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners, stated in a declaration in October 2014, big data derived from the IoT should be regarded and treated as personal data [Mauritius Declaration on the Internet of Things]. (2014, October 14). Retrieved from https://icdppc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Mauritius-Declaration.pdf. Therefore, encryption should be put in place to ensure the data passing over a network between devices is not subject to tampering. Another challenge is “what’s illegal in one country may not be illegal in another.” As data move cross servers, clouds, and devices, attempting to understand where data reside and who has claims over data is an impossible task (Greengard, 2015). >