while RFID (radio-frequency identification) for persons is up and coming. This
is a technology used in microchips implanted under your skin, which enables
you to communicate with devices such as secured doors, vending machines, etc.,
without remembering a code, by holding your hand near them. The microchips
can also contain various kinds of personal information, such as demographic
data, medical history, allergies, credit score, etc. A Swedish company began
implanting, on a voluntary basis, workers with RFID chips in 2015. Remote
surveillance is ‘not intended’. However, the use of these and many other devices
generates data, and the question remains what happens to it, who is licenced to
use it, and who uses it without licence.
CIU is pathological, but being connected has become so essential that a human
right of internet access is being seriously discussed. To the ‘digital natives’ it is a
fixture, a part of their identity. They touch their smartphone—and who does not
have one!—more than 1,000 times a day on average. There is in this range of
experience of personalized algorithms and electronic devices to connect a quality
that adds an element to our identity as legal subjects and as social beings. As
digitalization progresses, our pseudo identity merges with our identity, if only
because it includes information about the people we connect with and about our
whereabouts on this planet. We cannot run away from it, which is why Glenn
Greenwald entitled his book about former National Security Agency contractor
Edward Snowden’s quixotic attempt to shed some light into the dark side of this
brave world of ours, No Place to Hide.
Conclusions
Individual identity is the cornerstone of the rule of law and the relationship
between state and citizen. In law, it has to do with that which makes a person (or
thing) distinct from any other person (or thing). It means that a subject is the
same as it claims, or is charged, to be. The digital turn has added a new aspect to
our legal identity, and protecting us against identity theft is a new obligation of
the state, while we have no choice but learn to protect ourselves against profit-
seeking corporations, on the one hand, and a surveillance state, on the other.