Passive Wi-Fi monitoring in the wild: a long-term study across multiple location typologies

In this paper, we present a systematic analysis of large-scale human mobility patterns obtained from a passive Wi-Fi tracking system, deployed across different location typologies. We have deployed a system to cover urban areas served by public transportation systems as well as very isolated and rural areas. Over 4 years, we collected 572 million data points from a total of 82 routers covering an area of 2.8 km2. In this paper we provide a systematic analysis of the data and discuss how our low-cost approach can be used to help communities and policymakers to make decisions to improve people’s mobility at high temporal and spatial resolution by inferring presence characteristics against several sources of ground truth. Also, we present an automatic classification technique that can identify location types based on collected data.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

De-identification for privacy protection in multimedia content : A survey

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Slobodan Ribaric, Aladdin Ariyaeeinia, and Nikola Pavesic, ‘De-identification for privacy protection in multimedia content: A survey’, Signal Processing: Image Communication, Vol. 47, pp. 131-151, September 2016, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.image.2016.05.020. This manuscript version is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License CC BY NC-ND 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.Privacy is one of the most important social and political issues in our information society, characterized by a growing range of enabling and supporting technologies and services. Amongst these are communications, multimedia, biometrics, big data, cloud computing, data mining, internet, social networks, and audio-video surveillance. Each of these can potentially provide the means for privacy intrusion. De-identification is one of the main approaches to privacy protection in multimedia contents (text, still images, audio and video sequences and their combinations). It is a process for concealing or removing personal identifiers, or replacing them by surrogate personal identifiers in personal information in order to prevent the disclosure and use of data for purposes unrelated to the purpose for which the information was originally obtained. Based on the proposed taxonomy inspired by the Safe Harbour approach, the personal identifiers, i.e., the personal identifiable information, are classified as non-biometric, physiological and behavioural biometric, and soft biometric identifiers. In order to protect the privacy of an individual, all of the above identifiers will have to be de-identified in multimedia content. This paper presents a review of the concepts of privacy and the linkage among privacy, privacy protection, and the methods and technologies designed specifically for privacy protection in multimedia contents. The study provides an overview of de-identification approaches for non-biometric identifiers (text, hairstyle, dressing style, license plates), as well as for the physiological (face, fingerprint, iris, ear), behavioural (voice, gait, gesture) and soft-biometric (body silhouette, gender, age, race, tattoo) identifiers in multimedia documents.Peer reviewe

When Whereabouts is No Longer Thereabouts:Location Privacy in Wireless Networks

Modern mobile devices are fast, programmable and feature localization and wireless capabilities. These technological advances notably facilitate mobile access to Internet, development of mobile applications and sharing of personal information, such as location information. Cell phone users can for example share their whereabouts with friends on online social networks. Following this trend, the field of ubiquitous computing foresees communication networks composed of increasingly inter-connected wireless devices offering new ways to collect and share information in the future. It also becomes harder to control the spread of personal information. Privacy is a critical challenge of ubiquitous computing as sharing personal information exposes users' private lives. Traditional techniques to protect privacy in wired networks may be inadequate in mobile networks because users are mobile, have short-lived encounters and their communications can be easily eavesdropped upon. These characteristics introduce new privacy threats related to location information: a malicious entity can track users' whereabouts and learn aspects of users' private lives that may not be apparent at first. In this dissertation, we focus on three important aspects of location privacy: location privacy threats, location-privacy preserving mechanisms, and privacy-preservation in pervasive social networks. Considering the recent surge of mobile applications, we begin by investigating location privacy threats of location-based services. We push further the understanding of the privacy risk by identifying the type and quantity of location information that statistically reveals users' identities and points of interest to third parties. Our results indicate that users are at risk even if they access location-based services episodically. This highlights the need to design privacy into location-based services. In the second part of this thesis, we delve into the subject of privacy-preserving mechanisms for mobile ad hoc networks. First, we evaluate a privacy architecture that relies on the concept of mix zones to engineer anonymity sets. Second, we identify the need for protocols to coordinate the establishment of mix zones and design centralized and distributed approaches. Because individuals may have different privacy requirements, we craft a game-theoretic model of location privacy to analyze distributed protocols. This model predicts strategic behavior of rational devices that protects their privacy at a minimum cost. This prediction leads to the design of efficient privacy-preserving protocols. Finally, we develop a dynamic model of interactions between mobile devices in order to analytically evaluate the level of privacy provided by mix zones. Our results indicate the feasibility and limitations of privacy protection based on mix zones. In the third part, we extend the communication model of mobile ad hoc networks to explore social aspects: users form groups called "communities" based on interests, proximity, or social relations and rely on these communities to communicate and discover their context. We analyze using challenge-response methodology the privacy implications of this new communication primitive. Our results indicate that, although repeated interactions between members of the same community leak community memberships, it is possible to design efficient schemes to preserve privacy in this setting. This work is part of the recent trend of designing privacy protocols to protect individuals. In this context, the author hopes that the results obtained, with both their limitations and their promises, will inspire future work on the preservation of privacy

DRONE DELIVERY OF CBNRECy – DEW WEAPONS Emerging Threats of Mini-Weapons of Mass Destruction and Disruption (WMDD)

Drone Delivery of CBNRECy – DEW Weapons: Emerging Threats of Mini-Weapons of Mass Destruction and Disruption (WMDD) is our sixth textbook in a series covering the world of UASs and UUVs. Our textbook takes on a whole new purview for UAS / CUAS/ UUV (drones) – how they can be used to deploy Weapons of Mass Destruction and Deception against CBRNE and civilian targets of opportunity. We are concerned with the future use of these inexpensive devices and their availability to maleficent actors. Our work suggests that UASs in air and underwater UUVs will be the future of military and civilian terrorist operations. UAS / UUVs can deliver a huge punch for a low investment and minimize human casualties.https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/1046/thumbnail.jp

From Illegal Markets to Legitimate Businesses: The Portfolio of Organised Crime in Europe - Final Report of Project OCP Organized Crime Portfolio

Aim of Project OCP \u2013 Organised Crime Portfolio (www.ocportfolio.eu) \u2013 is to carry out an exploratory study of the economics of organised crime in Europe, and in particular to address three research questions, which are covered by the three sections of the final report: \u2022 Where organised crime proceeds are generated, from which illicit markets (Part 1); \u2022 Where these proceeds are then invested in the legitimate economy, in which regions, assets and business sectors (Part 2); \u2022 The extent to which these proceeds are confiscated by European authorities (Part 3). The project focuses on seven EU member states (Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom), represented by OCP partners, and for which provides an in-depth analysis. However, the report also presents a broader examination of the situation in Europe as a whole

Untangling the Web: A Guide To Internet Research

[Excerpt] Untangling the Web for 2007 is the twelfth edition of a book that started as a small handout. After more than a decade of researching, reading about, using, and trying to understand the Internet, I have come to accept that it is indeed a Sisyphean task. Sometimes I feel that all I can do is to push the rock up to the top of that virtual hill, then stand back and watch as it rolls down again. The Internet—in all its glory of information and misinformation—is for all practical purposes limitless, which of course means we can never know it all, see it all, understand it all, or even imagine all it is and will be. The more we know about the Internet, the more acute is our awareness of what we do not know. The Internet emphasizes the depth of our ignorance because our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite. My hope is that Untangling the Web will add to our knowledge of the Internet and the world while recognizing that the rock will always roll back down the hill at the end of the day