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TOWARDS A EUROPEAN PRIVACY INSTITUTE?

Brussels (BE). Due to political and socio-ethical reasons a common coordinated initiative is needed according to an independent, coherent and holistic scientific approach towards a systematic and careful investigation process. The aim is finding, interpreting and analyse facts regarding privacy at the European level. In short, this is the reason why a new initiative has been launched to set up a permanent European privacy Institute aimed at supporting synthesis between technology and private life. The initiative already involves about 40 experts, in particular academics, along with representatives from the entrepreneurial sector and an officer from the European Commission. The initiative originates from the desire to test how some values such as privacy and ethics could be integrated in the future technological planning regarding products. According to the initiative, awareness campaigns could be launched by a permanent institute regarding the issues involved in order to promote excellent centres aimed at supporting the EU member States and the industry. The institute should be organized according to a series of researches about important challenges - too complex to be dealt with by individuals or by small groups of researchers. An executive committee has been set up to act as spokesman to the EU institutions and collaborates with a new advisory scientific committee. The group supporting the initiative stressed that some world famous companies are carrying out researches about privacy. In Europe the very same kind of research is conducted in the scope of EU-funded projects, e.g. PRIME (Privacy and Identity Management for Europe), FIDIS (Future of Identity in the Information Society) and BITE (Biometric Identification Technology Ethics). Some European universities are launching their own research projects too.

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