A new communication from the European Commission to the other European bodies on the RFID (radio-frequency identification) titled "Internet of Things - An action plan for Europe" was made public on 18 June 2009.

The communication builds on the work of the Recommendation on the use of RFID published on 12 May 2009 after a fifteen-month period of consultations.

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Deutsch: EU unterstützt RFID mit ausreichendem Schutz für die Privatsphäre d...

The European Commission issued on 12 May 2009 a recommendation on the use of RFID (radio-frequency identification) after a fifteen-month period of consultations with supplying and using industries, standardisation bodies, consumers' organisations, civil society groups and trade unions.

Having in view the high continuous development of the smart chips industry, the Commission drafted the recommendation to help in ensuring the protection of the citizens' fundamental rights to privacy and data protection as stipulated in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union proclaimed on 14

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Online consultation comments on the staff paper "Early Challenges to the Internet of Things". EDRi contributed to the discussion via the RFID Expert Group. The preparation of the final communication by the COM is still ongoing.
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/rfid/library/index_en.h...

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Consultation on the early challenges regarding the "Internet of Things"
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/tl/activities/consultations/in...

Commission consults on how to put Europe into the lead of the transition to Web 3.0 (29.09.2008)
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/1422&...

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EDRi member FoeBuD e.V. has set up a contest for finding a RFID warning sign to be passed on to the EU's process in RFID legislation. Since the industry came up with a similar contest but looking for a somewhat "friendly" design, FoeBuD is looking for a precise warning sign that would shows the dangers for citizens' rights when RFID technology is involved.

There are two categories in FoeBuD's contest: strict and freestyle. In the strict category, a design for an official RFID warning sign is wanted. The winning design in this category shall be sent to the EU as a proposal for marking RFID tags and readers.

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Jeroen van Beek, a computer researcher at the University of Amsterdam, has shown in some tests conducted for The Times that the new micro-chipped passports, introduced in UK to protect against terrorism and organised crime, can be easily cloned.

The researcher has succeeded in cloning the chips of two British passports in which he introduced the pictures of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber and in passing the cloned chips as genuine through Golden Reader, which is the standard passport reader software used by the UN agency setting standards for e-passports and which is also recommended for use at airports. The cloning operation took less than an hour.

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Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors has sued the Dutch Computer Security Group of Radboud University in Nijmege in order to stop the publication of research results showing security flaws in NXP's Mifare Classic wireless smart cards used in transit and building entry systems around the world.

The technology is used for the transit system in The Netherlands, in the subway systems in London, Hong Kong and Boston, as well as in cards for accessing buildings and facilities, covering 80 percent of the market.

The security researchers of the Dutch university have checked the Mifare system used with Oyster cards for transport in London and recently succeeded in cracking the encryption on a card and clone it. They added credit to it

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Draft Recommendation on the implementation of privacy, data protection and information security principles in applications supported by Radio Frequency Identification (RFID): your opinion matters! The Public Consultation will be open for a period of eight weeks and will finish on 25th April 2008. You may find also a translation of the consultation in French and German.
http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/dispatch?form=RFIDRec