TechDispatch

Personal Information Management Systems (PIMS) are new products and services that help individuals to have more control over their personal data. PIMS enable individuals themselves to manage and control their online identity.

The PIMS concept offers a new approach in which individuals are the “holders” of their own personal information. PIMS allow individuals to manage their personal data in secure, local or online storage systems and share them when and with whom they choose. Individuals would be able to decide what services can use their data, and what third parties can share them. This allows for a human centric approach to personal data and to new business models, protecting against unlawful tracking and profiling techniques that aim at circumventing key data protection principles.

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Quantum computers can be highly beneficial to scientific developments due to the new, speedy way of performing computing. Once available, they however could break currently used cryptography and undermine the protection of (personal) data.

The physical laws of quantum mechanics allow for an alternative method to how today’s computers process information. Whereas traditional computers use bits (0 or 1) as a building block, quantum computers employ quantum bits, or qubits, that can be at the same moment a combination of |0⟩ and |1⟩.

The possible spectrum of values one qubit can adopt is best depicted by the surface of the Bloch sphere in Figure 1. While bits allow for two discrete values, qubits can store a point in a two-dimensional continuum, a surface of a sphere. Quantum computing can take advantage of those more powerful qubits and carry out operations not only for a determined value |0⟩ or |1⟩, but also for all possible superpositions at the same time. Consequently, quantum computing attains an efficiency advantage over binary computing for selected tasks. Some tasks would be rendered only feasible due to this efficiency boost, if the appropriate quantum computer hardware were available.

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In public health, contact tracing is the process to identify individuals who have been in contact with infected persons. Proximity tracing with smartphone applications and sensors could support contact tracing. It involves processing of sensitive personal data.
What is Contact Tracing?

During epidemics of infectious diseases, such as the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), it is important to lower the number of new infection cases and to stop it eventually. Therefore the infection chain of onward transmissions must be interrupted. When those persons known to be infected reveal their recent contacts, other infected persons may be identified, informed and e.g. isolated already early on, even before they become aware of their infection. The process to identify contacts of known cases is called contact tracing.
A person becomes a contact of a primary case by e.g. face-to-face contact within a short distance over some time span, physical contact or spending time indoors together–all within the incubation period of e.g. up to 2 weeks for the coronavirus disease.

To establish the risk exposure in contact tracing, information about the distance between the persons and the duration of contact are important. Close contacts with high-risk exposure may then become subject to different rules or treatments.

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The modern car is a computer on four wheels. Today’s cars are constantly processing and transmitting data about themselves, their surroundings and the people in it – in most of the cases even without the knowledge of the driver. This data is used in navigation, to manage car systems like the engine or to deliver communication and infotainment services to passengers.

Increasingly today, the data generated by the car is shared over the internet with other vehicles, traffic infrastructure and private and public entities. These so-called connected cars belong to the evolving Internet of Things (IoT) - with manifold related risks attached. The growing amount of personal data generated by connected cars raises the interest of insurers, automakers, law enforcement authorities and other third parties.

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To tackle climate change, the European Union has set itself a target to ensure that 80% of EU consumers are using smart meters by 2020. This should accelerate the move towards cleaner energy and reduce energy consumption. The European Commission issued a Recommendation on preparations for the roll-out of smart metering systems in 2012. Today, there are an increasing number of smart meters being used across the EU and integrated with other smart home appliances.

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