The future Regularion on Privacy and Electronic Communications (RPEC, a new acronym for privacy experts) is intended to enter into force alongside the GDPR. As the Article 29 Working Party (WP) recognises in its Opinion 01/2017 (WP247), «it is still of concern that this is an ambitious timescale«.

In other words, the GPDR will be soon (well, it already is) the milestone in the privacy scenario and, in the near future, the RPEC will complement the regulation with new rulles applying to «the processing of electronic communications data carried out in connection with the provision and the use of electronic communications services and to information related to the terminal equipment of end-users» (Art. 2, proposed RPEC).

Reading the somewhat incomplete text, with 43 recitals and 29 articles, I focused my attention on the Internet of Things (IoT) regulation. The Recital 12 was pretty promising, recognising the importance of ensuring «full protection of the rights and confidentiality of communications and to promote a trusted and secure Internet of Things in the digital market«.

That sounded good! There will be an express recognition of the confidentiality of the information communicated among machines.

I kept on reading the RPEC and I’ve read it twice, but I haven’t found any corresponding article. Obviously, I was missing something.

Finally, the Article 29 WP helped me, confirming that the regulation of the confidentiality of IoT communications was only mentioned in the Recital 12, but there was not a real article regulating it.

What a pity! There are so many statements about the importance of the confidentiality in the IoT world and we will not have even a single article regulating it?! How is that?

Dear European Commission, please, protect the confidentiality of my dishwasher: its privacy is my privacy.

You can see the video of desperate dishwasher here:

trim.BD0C4363-B571-4FCB-B4DB-1D6E7C1A6637