What Are E-Textiles And What Are The Privacy Implications?

• Jeremy Morton

This paper began life as a presentation at the ITechlaw Association conference in Miami, Florida, in May 2016. It was easy to make people laugh in my introduction, by asking if any of them had ‘intelligent socks’. Do you? We are familiar with devices that measure our heart rate, or our footsteps, as an aid to keeping fit. Most people are less familiar with ‘e-textiles’. But, in fact, as an idea they are at least 20 years old. US patent 6210771 filed in September 1997 disclosed ‘Electrically active textiles and articles made therefrom’. And yet, at that time, the potential applications were unknown. The inventors of the ‘771 patent seem to have been mostly interested in using the technology to enhance the aesthetic design of fashion clothing. A few years later, companies like Pioneer were publicising ‘wearable computers’ allowing clothing to become an interface between the wearer’s body and a computer; but these now look quite basic.