Wearable Technologies and Smart Clothes in the Fashion Business: Some Issues Concerning Cybersecurity and Data Protection

Abstract

Wearable devices and smart clothes give rise to pivotal technological and legal issues in the fashion business. The cybersecurity attention in the digital society, and the advent of General Data Protection Regulation No. 2016/679 (GDPR) in the European, and global, legal framework, implied the need to evaluate which norms and aspects of the European Regulation could apply to wearable devices, which are becoming more and more invasive. Wearable devices are, first of all (and from a data protection point of view), intrusive tools that can put users’ personal (and intimate) data at risk. In particular, we will discuss the aspects of the spread of an accountability “culture” (also) in the fashion business, the need for correct management policy of data breaches, the rights of transparency for users/customers who are using wearable devices and smart clothes, and respect for the dignity and nondiscrimination of the individual during the data collection and processing. These are, all, fundamental points: the protection of the individual’s data in the digital landscape is, in fact, strictly connected to the protection of his/her fundamental rights in the modern digital society.

Keywords

• wearable devices
• GDPR
• data breach
• smart fashion
• smart clothes
• transparency