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• All products must respect legislation aimed at protecting and enhancing
environmental quality and consumer protection. This could imply that non-medical
implants or RFID chips introduced inside the body which are not safe should be
forbidden. This raises the question of whether current legislation is adequate for
regulating the use of sub dermal RFID chips for tagging people or for their use as
an e-wallet?
• In the research phase, a balance must be struck between academic freedom and
responsible science and technology development. This is particularly sensitive for
dual use technologies with civil as well as defence applications, requiring a new
balance between openness and handling classified information.
• The debate on relevant European legislation is continuing, especially on privacy
and personal data protection. This discussion is clearly embedded in global
discussions, e.g. in the OECD or in bilateral negotiations such as with the USA.
The EU will in the coming years develop new rules for handling classified
information in EU funded projects.
5.3 Impacts on ethics and human rights
To assess potential impacts of nanotechnology based security technologies on ethics and
human rights, strategy documents discussing the aims and scope of European Security
research policies are major sources of information. As nanotechnology based security
technologies currently do not exist or are only just entering into the market of security
technologies, the actual impacts on ethics and human rights can be observed only to a
limited extent, e.g. in the case of RFID chips, which are currently being discussed in the
European and national Parliaments, other policy making circles and the public. The
following discussion should be considered preliminary and progress in the field should be
monitored to identify emerging unforeseen impacts as soon as possible, enabling
adequate policy making.
5.3.1 Impacts of Security technologies
In 2003 the EC engaged a Group of Personalities in the field of security research (Group
of Personalities, 2003), who proposed priorities for European Security Research and the
integration of civil and defence technology development activities of the EU and member
states. 26 The Group of Personalities launched the concept of ‘Internal Security’ in Europe:
“… a concept aimed at protecting citizens from threats like terrorism, organised crime,
etc. The fundamental objective of ‘Internal Security’ is hence to protect the freedom and
integrity of European citizens.” “Europe’s vision of security must … embrace a notion of
‘Internal Security’ that can include a genuine feeling of well-being and safety for its
citizens, while respecting its values of human rights, democracy, rule of law and
fundamental freedoms.” The Group of Personalities believed in the benefits technology
can bring to security: “Technology itself cannot guarantee security, but security without
the support of technology is impossible”. This view is not without controversy and needs
more corroboration than is offered.
During the Nanoforum “Nanotechnology and Security” workshop, Dr Donald Bruce
stressed the need to “suspend belief that innovation is always good”. Before deciding on
developing any new security technology, the question should be asked whether there is a
real need for the innovation. Do existing measures no longer suffice? (Morrison, 2007).
Such an assessment of gaps in present security which require new technological solutions
is lacking in the report from the Group of Personalities. The main motivation is the lower
level of investment in security and defence technologies in Europe compared to the
United States, and the lower efficiency in research spending due to a lack of cooperation
between member states. There is no clear demand from the technology end users. To
26 In this report, we can only discuss civil security aspects, leaving aside military applications.
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