Ontology-based Access Control in Open Scenarios: Applications to Social Networks and the Cloud

La integració d'Internet a la societat actual ha fet possible compartir fàcilment grans quantitats d'informació electrònica i recursos informàtics (que inclouen maquinari, serveis informàtics, etc.) en entorns distribuïts oberts. Aquests entorns serveixen de plataforma comuna per a usuaris heterogenis (per exemple, empreses, individus, etc.) on es proporciona allotjament d'aplicacions i sistemes d'usuari personalitzades; i on s'ofereix un accés als recursos compartits des de qualsevol lloc i amb menys esforços administratius. El resultat és un entorn que permet a individus i empreses augmentar significativament la seva productivitat. Com ja s'ha dit, l'intercanvi de recursos en entorns oberts proporciona importants avantatges per als diferents usuaris, però, també augmenta significativament les amenaces a la seva privacitat. Les dades electròniques compartides poden ser explotades per tercers (per exemple, entitats conegudes com "Data Brokers"). Més concretament, aquestes organitzacions poden agregar la informació compartida i inferir certes característiques personals sensibles dels usuaris, la qual cosa pot afectar la seva privacitat. Una manera de del.liar aquest problema consisteix a controlar l'accés dels usuaris als recursos potencialment sensibles. En concret, la gestió de control d'accés regula l'accés als recursos compartits d'acord amb les credencials dels usuaris, el tipus de recurs i les preferències de privacitat dels propietaris dels recursos/dades. La gestió eficient de control d'accés és crucial en entorns grans i dinàmics. D'altra banda, per tal de proposar una solució viable i escalable, cal eliminar la gestió manual de regles i restriccions (en la qual, la majoria de les solucions disponibles depenen), atès que aquesta constitueix una pesada càrrega per a usuaris i administradors . Finalment, la gestió del control d'accés ha de ser intuïtiu per als usuaris finals, que en general no tenen grans coneixements tècnics.La integración de Internet en la sociedad actual ha hecho posible compartir fácilmente grandes cantidades de información electrónica y recursos informáticos (que incluyen hardware, servicios informáticos, etc.) en entornos distribuidos abiertos. Estos entornos sirven de plataforma común para usuarios heterogéneos (por ejemplo, empresas, individuos, etc.) donde se proporciona alojamiento de aplicaciones y sistemas de usuario personalizadas; y donde se ofrece un acceso ubicuo y con menos esfuerzos administrativos a los recursos compartidos. El resultado es un entorno que permite a individuos y empresas aumentar significativamente su productividad. Como ya se ha dicho, el intercambio de recursos en entornos abiertos proporciona importantes ventajas para los distintos usuarios, no obstante, también aumenta significativamente las amenazas a su privacidad. Los datos electrónicos compartidos pueden ser explotados por terceros (por ejemplo, entidades conocidas como “Data Brokers”). Más concretamente, estas organizaciones pueden agregar la información compartida e inferir ciertas características personales sensibles de los usuarios, lo cual puede afectar a su privacidad. Una manera de paliar este problema consiste en controlar el acceso de los usuarios a los recursos potencialmente sensibles. En concreto, la gestión de control de acceso regula el acceso a los recursos compartidos de acuerdo con las credenciales de los usuarios, el tipo de recurso y las preferencias de privacidad de los propietarios de los recursos/datos. La gestión eficiente de control de acceso es crucial en entornos grandes y dinámicos. Por otra parte, con el fin de proponer una solución viable y escalable, es necesario eliminar la gestión manual de reglas y restricciones (en la cual, la mayoría de las soluciones disponibles dependen), dado que ésta constituye una pesada carga para usuarios y administradores. Por último, la gestión del control de acceso debe ser intuitivo para los usuarios finales, que por lo general carecen de grandes conocimientos técnicos.Thanks to the advent of the Internet, it is now possible to easily share vast amounts of electronic information and computer resources (which include hardware, computer services, etc.) in open distributed environments. These environments serve as a common platform for heterogeneous users (e.g., corporate, individuals etc.) by hosting customized user applications and systems, providing ubiquitous access to the shared resources and requiring less administrative efforts; as a result, they enable users and companies to increase their productivity. Unfortunately, sharing of resources in open environments has significantly increased the privacy threats to the users. Indeed, shared electronic data may be exploited by third parties, such as Data Brokers, which may aggregate, infer and redistribute (sensitive) personal features, thus potentially impairing the privacy of the individuals. A way to palliate this problem consists on controlling the access of users over the potentially sensitive resources. Specifically, access control management regulates the access to the shared resources according to the credentials of the users, the type of resource and the privacy preferences of the resource/data owners. The efficient management of access control is crucial in large and dynamic environments such as the ones described above. Moreover, in order to propose a feasible and scalable solution, we need to get rid of manual management of rules/constraints (in which most available solutions rely) that constitutes a serious burden for the users and the administrators. Finally, access control management should be intuitive for the end users, who usually lack technical expertise, and they may find access control mechanism more difficult to understand and rigid to apply due to its complex configuration settings

User-centric Privacy Engineering for the Internet of Things

User privacy concerns are widely regarded as a key obstacle to the success of modern smart cyber-physical systems. In this paper, we analyse, through an example, some of the requirements that future data collection architectures of these systems should implement to provide effective privacy protection for users. Then, we give an example of how these requirements can be implemented in a smart home scenario. Our example architecture allows the user to balance the privacy risks with the potential benefits and take a practical decision determining the extent of the sharing. Based on this example architecture, we identify a number of challenges that must be addressed by future data processing systems in order to achieve effective privacy management for smart cyber-physical systems.Comment: 12 Page

Privacy as personal resistance: exploring legal narratology and the need for a legal architecture for personal privacy rights

Different cultures produce different privacies – both architecturally and legally speaking – as well as in their different legal architectures. The ‘Simms principle’ can be harnessed to produce semi-constitutional privacy protection through statute; building on the work already done in ‘bringing rights home’ through the Human Rights Act 1998. This article attempts to set out a notion of semi-entrenched legal rights, which will help to better portray the case for architectural, constitutional privacy, following an examination of the problems with a legal narrative for privacy rights as they currently exist. I will use parallel ideas from the works of W.B. Yeats and Costas Douzinas to explore and critique these assumptions and arguments. The ultimate object of this piece is an argument for the creation of a legal instrument, namely an Act of Parliament, in the United Kingdom; the purpose of which is to protect certain notions of personal privacy from politically-motivated erosion and intrusion

Law, Norms, Piracy and Online Anonymity – Practices of de-identification in the global file sharing community

Purpose The purpose of this study is to better understand online anonymity in the global file-sharing community in the context of social norms and copyright law. The study describes the respondents in terms of use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or similar services with respect to age, gender, geographical location, as well as analysing the correlation with file-sharing frequencies. Design/methodology/approach This study, to a large extent, collected descriptive data through a web-based survey. This was carried out in collaboration with the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay (TPB), which allowed us to link the survey from the main logo of their site. In 72 hours, we received over 75,000 responses, providing the opportunity to compare use of anonymity services with factors of age, geographical region, file-sharing frequency, etc. Findings Overall, 17.8 per cent of the respondents used a VPN or similar service (free or paid). A core of high-frequency uploaders is more inclined to use VPNs or similar services than the average file sharer. Online anonymity practices in the file-sharing community depend on how legal and social norms correlate (more enforcement means more anonymity). Research limitations/implications The web-based survey was in English and mainly attracted visitors on The Pirate Bay’s web site. This means that it is likely that those who do not have the language skills necessary were excluded from the survey. Practical implications This study adds to the knowledge of online anonymity practices in terms of traceability and identification, and therefore describes some of the conditions for legal enforcement in a digital environment. Social implications This study adds to the knowledge of how the Internet is changing in terms of a polarization between stronger means of legally enforced identification and a growing awareness of how to be more untraceable. Originality/value The scale of the survey, with over 75,000 respondents from most parts of the world, has likely not been seen before on this topic. The descriptive study of anonymity practices in the global file-sharing community is therefore likely unique

Painting a Moving Train: Adding ‘Postmodern’ to the Taxonomy of the Law

This article proposes that certain laws or forms of law can be characterized as postmodern because they, like their counterparts in literature or architecture, share similar attributes. Consistent with postmodernism\u27s rejection of modernism, these laws appear to defy the modernist attributes of unitary core principles or singular meaning and stasis. Instead, these postmodern laws are: fragmentary, decentralized, uncertain and allow a multiplicity of interpretations; they reject master-narratives and embrace paradox; they are grounded or rooted in daily life; and are also connected to the internet, cyber-space and high technology.The identification and characterization of certain laws as postmodern have the paradoxical modernist effect of reducing or normalizing such otherwise uncertain law. More practically, however, this labeling, which is a modernist act, creates a normative tool for bridging the postmodern and modern. A shared dialogue can emerge where this new form of postmodern law can be identified, appreciated, critiqued, and placed in an historic context.The use of postmodern as a label also keeps the concept of postmodernism alive at a time when members of the academy have called it dead or passe. Far from being dead, postmodernism is deeply entrenched in the law\u27s lexicon and culture, much in the same way it is widely used and embedded in popular culture. To pretend it is dead or insignificant restricts the legal academy\u27s ability to acknowledge postmodernism\u27s contribution to the academy and its usefulness as a tool in both practice and theory.In this article, the label postmodern is applied, as an example, to the privacy law that has emerged from the Safe Harbor Agreement between the United States and the European Union and which arose out of the EU Privacy Directive. By viewing the Agreement as a postmodern law, the weaknesses of the law from a modernist perspective are exposed, but its strengths, from a postmodernist and pragmatic perspective, can be appreciated. This article also applies the label to computer code that is deemed a form of law by scholars such as Lawrence Lessig. The label postmodern applied to code, highlights this law\u27s ontological uncertainty and allusiveness under more traditional and modern definitions of law. It is the paradox of these laws being flexible and adaptable while simultaneously being normative that makes the postmodernist aspect of these laws valuable. In this postmodern era of technology and cyberspace, a postmodern law such as the Safe Harbor Agreement, is likely to be the model for future legal regimes that can be flexible, dynamic, evolving, and multifaceted while still providing for the normative needs of regulation in the emerging global legal system

Semantic privacy-preserving framework for electronic health record linkage

The combination of digitized health information and web-based technologies offers many possibilities for data analysis and business intelligence. In the healthcare and biomedical research domain, applications depending on electronic health records (EHRs) identify privacy preservation as a major concern. Existing solutions cannot always satisfy the evolving research demands such as linking patient records across organizational boundaries due to the potential for patient re-identification. In this work, we show how semantic methods can be applied to support the formulation and enforcement of access control policy whilst ensuring that privacy leakage can be detected and prevented. The work is illustrated through a case study associated with the Australasian Diabetes Data Network (ADDN – www.addn.org.au), the national paediatric type-1 diabetes data registry, and the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN – www.aurin.org.au) platform that supports Australia-wide access to urban and built environment data sets. We demonstrate that through extending the eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) with semantic capabilities, finer-grained access control encompassing data risk disclosure mechanisms can be supported. We discuss the contributions that can be made using this approach to socio-economic development and political management within business systems, and especially those situations where secure data access and data linkage is required

A platform for discovering and sharing confidential ballistic crime data.

Criminal investigations generate large volumes of complex data that detectives have to analyse and understand. This data tends to be "siloed" within individual jurisdictions and re-using it in other investigations can be difficult. Investigations into trans-national crimes are hampered by the problem of discovering relevant data held by agencies in other countries and of sharing those data. Gun-crimes are one major type of incident that showcases this: guns are easily moved across borders and used in multiple crimes but finding that a weapon was used elsewhere in Europe is difficult. In this paper we report on the Odyssey Project, an EU-funded initiative to mine, manipulate and share data about weapons and crimes. The project demonstrates the automatic combining of data from disparate repositories for cross-correlation and automated analysis. The data arrive from different cultural/domains with multiple reference models using real-time data feeds and historical databases