Data Minimisation in Communication Protocols: A Formal Analysis Framework and Application to Identity Management

With the growing amount of personal information exchanged over the Internet, privacy is becoming more and more a concern for users. One of the key principles in protecting privacy is data minimisation. This principle requires that only the minimum amount of information necessary to accomplish a certain goal is collected and processed. "Privacy-enhancing" communication protocols have been proposed to guarantee data minimisation in a wide range of applications. However, currently there is no satisfactory way to assess and compare the privacy they offer in a precise way: existing analyses are either too informal and high-level, or specific for one particular system. In this work, we propose a general formal framework to analyse and compare communication protocols with respect to privacy by data minimisation. Privacy requirements are formalised independent of a particular protocol in terms of the knowledge of (coalitions of) actors in a three-layer model of personal information. These requirements are then verified automatically for particular protocols by computing this knowledge from a description of their communication. We validate our framework in an identity management (IdM) case study. As IdM systems are used more and more to satisfy the increasing need for reliable on-line identification and authentication, privacy is becoming an increasingly critical issue. We use our framework to analyse and compare four identity management systems. Finally, we discuss the completeness and (re)usability of the proposed framework

Adopting A Legislative Approach for Data in the Fourth Amendment: Defining Personal Data as an “Effect”

This Article addresses the need to recognize a property-based right in personal data and to limit the amount of personal information that can be lawfully collected about individuals online. The Fourth Amendment, protecting “persons, houses, papers, and effects” from unreasonable searches must be interpreted to ensure privacy for personal data. The evolving nature of data privacy protections and global data privacy standards emphasizes the necessity to develop clear standards and statutes to protect an individual’s interest in their personal data. Statutes such as the E.U.’s GDPR and California’s CCPA, provide a regulatory framework on how to approach data privacy on the federal level. Using a property-based approach to “effects” and personal data can provide a significant resurgence and revolution in protecting individual privacy. Expanding this privacy right through a legislative approach and the ‘mere evidence’ rule will reform the convoluted ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ framework outlined in Katz v. United States and its progeny

A framework of privacy shield in organizational information systems

Preserving Privacy and the protection of personally identifiable information (PII) have been of increasing interest over the last few years. Many privacy advocates, and a significant portion of the general public, feared that the new initiatives used in an attempt to fight terrorism, would have a serious impact on an individual?s right and ability to protect their privacy. This paper proposes a new framework for Preserving Privacy for individuals along with the protection of personally identifiable information. We have termed it Privacy Shield. Through the application of anonymity and privacy principles in design, the privacy protecting separation of data, the use of public key infrastructure, and the application of our Information System Hippocratic Policies, we provide a framework of privacy shield to protect an information system user?s personal data

Trading Friendship for Value: An Investigation of Collective Privacy Concerns in Social Application Usage

Online social applications do not only acquire individuals’ personal information but also at times collect the personal information of an individual’s social networks. Despite the importance of protecting collective privacy, this topic has received little attention in the information system community. To fill this gap in the literature, this article focuses on three unique issues pertinent to collective privacy. First, drawing on the Communication Privacy Management theory, we offer a theoretical framework on the dimensionality of collective privacy concerns (CPC). Second, we propose to operationalize the three dimensions of CPC using a second-order reflective construct, and we plan to develop a scale for it. Third, we identify antecedents of CPC pertinent to the context of social application usage and propose to test a research model on the relationships between these antecedents and CPC as well as the downstream effect on behavioral intentions

Sex differences in attitudes towards online privacy and anonymity among Israeli students with different technical backgrounds

Introduction. In this exploratory study, we proposed an experimental framework to investigate and model male/female differences in attitudes towards online privacy and anonymity among Israeli students. Our aim was to comparatively model men and women's online privacy attitudes, and to assess the online privacy gender gap. Method. Various factors related to the user's online privacy and anonymity were considered, such as awareness of anonymous threats made online, concern for protecting personal information on the Internet, online privacy self-efficacy, online privacy literacy and users' tendency to engage in privacy paradox behaviour, i.e., personal data disclosure despite the awareness of anonymity and privacy threats. Analysis. A user study was carried out among 169 Israeli academic students through a quantitative method using closed-ended questionnaires. The subjects' responses were analysed using standard statistical measures. We then proposed a summarized comparative model for the two sexes' online privacy behaviour. Results. We found that a digital gap still exists between men and women regarding technological knowledge and skills used to protect their identity and personal information on the Web. Interestingly, users' tendency to engage in privacy paradox behaviour was not higher among men despite their higher level of technological online privacy literacy compared to women. Conclusions. Women's relatively high online privacy self-efficacy level and their low awareness of technological threat do not match their relatively low technological online privacy literacy level. This leads to a lower ability to protect their identity and personal information as compared to men. We conclude that further steps should be taken to eliminate the inter-gender technological gap in online privacy and anonymity awareness and literacy

Protection of Consumer Privacy in E-commerce

Among the negative effects on Internet consumers, the divulgence of personal information to the public has been reported as one of the most serious infringements on consumer rights. Both consumers and sellers around the world have sought to come up with an optimal solution for information privacy. Several incompatible characteristics of regulating consumer privacy in e-commerce between the U.S. and Korea were explored, and curative suggestions were made to establish a new legal framework to protect online consumer privacy. First, Korea’s regulations for protecting online consumer privacy were found to be centrally controlled, while the U.S. authorities have encouraged self-regulation. Considering the long run efficiency of self-regulation, the Korean authorities should seek more self-regulatory measures and establish consensus among the businesses to voluntarily protect consumer online privacy. Second, U.S. regulations on protection of online consumer privacy are for the most part commercially oriented and controlled by the FTC, whereas in Korea, an administrative department, the Ministry of Information and Communication, regulates online consumer privacy as a primary authority, resulting in lack of specialization in the matters of consumer protection. To improve the efficiency and specialization in regulation of online consumer privacy in Korea, it would be necessary to promulgate a directive specially designed for protecting consumer privacy and delegating the regulatory power to the Korea Consumer Protection Agency established by the Consumer Protection Act. Finally, international arbitration is recommended as the best tool to resolve and prevent the intricacies of international litigation brought against violation of online consumer privacy

Privacy in Cooperative Distributed Systems: Modeling and Protection Framework

A new form of computation is emerging rapidly with cloud computing, mobile computing, wearable computing and the Internet-of-Things. All can be characterized as a class of “Cooperative Distributed Systems” (CDS) in open environment. A major driver of the growth is the exponential adoption by people and organizations within all aspects of their day-to-day matters. In this context, users’ requirements for privacy protection are becoming essential and complex beyond the traditional approaches. This requires a formal treatment of “privacy” as a fundamental computation concept in CDS paradigm. The objective is to develop a comprehensive formal model for “privacy” as base to build a CDS based framework and platform in which various applications allow users to enjoy the comprehensive services in open environments while protecting their privacy seamlessly. To this end, this thesis presents a novel way of understudying, modeling and analyzing privacy concerns in CDS. A formal foundations and model of privacy is developed within the context of information management. This served as a base for developing a privacy protection management framework for CDS. It includes a privacy-aware agent model for CDS platform with the ability to support interaction-based privacy protection. The feasibility of the proposed models has been demonstrated by developing an agent-based CDS platform using JIAC framework and a privacy-based Contract Net Protocol. It also included the application scenarios for the framework for privacy protection is Internet-of-Tings, cloud-based resource scheduling and personal assistance

Privacy As a Collective Norm

As the economic value of aggregating personal data has grown, so too have concerns over the economic power “owning” such data gives to those who collect it. Existing legal regimes governing data privacy have struggled to strike a balance between protecting personal privacy and preserving the economic efficiencies that can be gained by permitting the collection and exploitation of personal data. This Article proposes a collective re-conceptualization of one subset of personal data: information about what we do, say, and like. This data has little value in isolation—it only becomes valuable when combined with the information about what others do, say, and like. When so combined, this “big data” should be viewed, not as personal property, but as a collective norm. Those who collect this data deserve compensation in exchange for the economic efficiencies that its collection provides; but complete and unlimited ownership of that data—the result of the existing “private property” framework—is too rich. The Article explains how we arrived at the existing legal regime governing data privacy, evaluates existing structures to explain why they do not and cannot work, and argues that a reconceptualization of privacy makes sense economically, culturally, and morally. This Article concludes by suggesting a regulatory structure that might better serve all interested parties when privacy is considered as a collective norm

The Privacy Librarian is In! How Privacy Issues Affect Researchers and Libraries

Faced with an increasingly complex online environment through which libraries provide access to scholarly resources, librarians have found it difficult to educate users in protecting their personal information and online behaviors from inappropriate and sometimes unauthorized use while promoting the personalization services that users find beneficial. Modeled after the long-running Peanuts cartoon with Lucy offering advice for 5 cents, a panel composed of librarians, a vendor, and a publisher convened an interactive session that tackled key privacy issues in the researcher, vendor, and library framework. It began with the “Privacy Librarian” training a new library employee while a stream of patrons asked them privacy-related questions and research scenarios. After this tour through privacy issues, the panel highlighted the context in which these patron questions existed. Topics included privacy considerations in complex authentication schemas, website tracking, browser security, campus surveillance, and data privacy in third-party vendor accounts