RFID Security and Privacy

The European Commission has published in May 2009 a recommendation "on the implementation of privacy and data protection principles in applications supported by radio-frequency identification", which is designed to provide "guidance to Member States on the design and operation of RFID applications in a lawful, ethical and socially and politically acceptable way, respecting the right to privacy and ensuring protection of personal data." This recommendation requires RFID operators to conduct a "Privacy and Data Protection Impact Assessment" before an RFID application is deployed, and make its results available to the competent authority. The RFID recommendation is also designed to promote "information and transparency on RFID use", in particular through the development of "a common European sign developed by European Standardisation Organisations, with the support of concerned stakeholders", designed "to inform individuals of the presence of readers". The RFID PIA (Privacy and Impact Asssessment) process aims to reach several objectives: * to favour "privacy by design" by helping data controllers to address privacy and data protection before a product or service is deployed, * to help data controllers to address privacy and data protection risks in a comprehensive manner. an opportunity to reduce legal uncertainty and avoid loss of trust from consumers, * to help data controllers and data protection authorities to gain more insight into the privacy and data protection aspects of RFID applications. The industry has proposed a RFID PIA framework which classifies a RFID application into 4 possible levels: Level 0 applications, which essentially cover RFID applications that do not process personal data and where tags are only manipulated by users, and which are rightly excluded from conducting a PIA. Level 1 applications cover applications where no personal data is processed, yet tags are carried by individuals. Level 2 applications process personal data but where tags themselves do not contain personal data. Level 3 applications where tags contain personal data. If the RFID application level is determined to be 1 or above, the RFID operator is then required to conduct a four part analysis of the application, with a level of detail that is proportionate to identified privacy and data protection implications. The first part is used to describe the RFID application. The second part allows highlighting control and security measures. The third part addresses user information and rights. The final part of the proposed PIA framework requires the RFID operator to conclude whether or not the RFID application is ready for deployment. As a result of the PIA process, the RFID operator will produce a PIA report that will be made available to the competent authority. For the industry, only levels 2 and 3 are to be submitted to a PIA because it considers that information contained in a tag at level 1 are not personal. However level 1 arises concerns of Article 29 Working Party because tagged items carried by a person contain unique identifiers that could be read remotely. In turn, these unique identifiers could be used to recognize that particular person through time. It raises the possibility that a person will be tracked without his knowledge by a third party. When a unique identifier is associated to a person, it falls in the definition of personal data set forth in Directive 95/46/EC, regardless of the fact that the "social identity" (name, address, etc.) of the person remains unknown (i.e. he is "identifiable" but not necessarily "identified"). Additionally, the unique number contained in a tag can also serve as a means to remotely identify the nature of items carried by a person, which in turn may reveal information about social status, health, or more. Thus, even in those cases where a tag contains solely a number that is unique within a particular context, and no additional personal data, care must be taken to address potential privacy and security issues if this tag is going to be carried by persons. The Working Party has urged the industry to fully address this issue, by clearly mentioning it in the framework as part of a revised risk assessment approach for level 1. This chapter will address the issue of protecting privacy of RFID tag carriers in a privacy by design model which puts them in a position to decide if they accept or not to be tracked at level 1. In case of a negative decision, tags have to be deactivated. Security measures have also to be taken to protect personal information on RFID tags against information leak which could lead to identity theft

Semantic Brokering of Multimedia Contents for Smart Delivery of Ubiquitous Services in Pervasive Environments

With the proliferation of modern mobile devices having the capability to interact each other and with the environment in a transparent manner, there is an increase in the development of those applications that are specifically designed for pervasive and ubiquitous environments. Those applications are able to provide a service of interest for the user that depends on context information, such as the user's position, his preferences, the capability of the device and its available resources. Services have to respond in a rational way in many different situations choosing the actions with the best expected result by the user, so making environment not only more connected and efficient, but smarter. Here we present a semantic framework that provides the technology for the development of intelligent, context aware services and their delivery in pervasive and ubiquitous environments

Gap analysis of research, technology, & development activities

Most energy usage of buildings throughout their life cycle is during the operational stage (~80%). The decisions made in the conception and design stages of new buildings, as well as in renovation stages of existing buildings, influence about 80% of the total life cycle energy consumption. The impact of user behaviour and real-time control is in the range of 20%. ICT has been identified as one possible means to design, optimize, regulate and control energy use within existing and future (smart) buildings. This books presents a collection of best practices, gap analysis of current research and technology development activities, a research roadmap, and a series of recommendations for ICT supported energy efficiency in buildings. Key research, technology, and development priorities include: integrated design and production management; intelligent and integrated control; user awareness and decision support; energy management and trading; integration Technologies. The vision for ICT supported energy efficiency of buildings in the short, medium, and long term is advocated as follows: Short term: Buildings meet the energy efficiency requirements of regulations and users; Medium term: The energy performance of buildings is optimised considering the whole life cycle; Long term: New business models are driven by energy efficient “prosumer” buildings at district level – long term

The datafication of the workplace

Technological changes in the workplace has a long history, but the recent onus on the generation of data as a central part of the digital economy brings about particular transformations that deserve further attention. Communications tools such as phones, email and computers are monitored in many companies, at the same time as new data sources such as social networks, shared calendars or collaborative working tools are being integrated to increase knowledge not only about the professional activities of workers but also about who they are, or what they might be likely to do in the future. In addition, chips, wearables and sensor networks are increasingly integrated within the broader trend of the Internet of Things (IoT)2 to facilitate emotional as well as physical states. The development of machine learning (ML) facilitates the automated processing of information, whilst multimedia databases are being labelled with semantic information to identify and measure activities, and natural language processing (NLP) can extract knowledge from non-structured texts, such as emails and social networking content to perform sentiment and tone analysis. In this report we provide an overview of these trends within the context of Europe, and focus particularly on tools used for hiring, employee surveillance, performance assessment and management. The overview presented here is not intended to be comprehensive, but is intended to identify key trends with concrete examples of prominent companies and tools in this space, as a way to advance further research agendas on the datafication of the workplace

Applying an unified access control for IoT-based Intelligent Agent Systems

IEEE 8th International Conference on Service-Oriented Computing and Applications (SOCA), 19/10/2015-21/10/2015, Roma, ItaliaThe rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm has allowed the design and development of new services interconnecting heterogeneous devices. However, the complexity of these new systems hasn"t been followed by the increase of intelligence and reasoning of the devices connected. On the other hand, intelligent agent systems have developed precisely these characteristics so the combination of both paradigms by modelling intelligent agents in IoT devices is a very promising approach that will enable a more powerful and smart IoT. The interconnection of agents through a Internet-based network implies addressing critical issues that affect all network communications, such as security, privacy and access control, specially given the sensitivity of the information exchanged by agents. In this paper, we propose the application of User-Managed Access (UMA) to provide an unified access control schema for an heterogeneous hybrid architecture of IoT devices and intelligent agents.Ministerio de Economía y Competitivida

An architecture for user preference-based IoT service selection in cloud computing using mobile devices for smart campus

The Internet of things refers to the set of objects that have identities and virtual personalities operating in smart spaces using intelligent interfaces to connect and communicate within social environments and user context. Interconnected devices communicating to each other or to other machines on the network have increased the number of services. The concepts of discovery, brokerage, selection and reliability are important in dynamic environments. These concepts have emerged as an important field distinguished from conventional distributed computing by its focus on large-scale resource sharing, delivery and innovative applications. The usage of Internet of Things technology across different service provisioning environments has increased the challenges associated with service selection and discovery. Although a set of terms can be used to express requirements for the desired service, a more detailed and specific user interface would make it easy for the users to express their requirements using high-level constructs. In order to address the challenge of service selection and discovery, we developed an architecture that enables a representation of user preferences and manipulates relevant descriptions of available services. To ensure that the key components of the architecture work, algorithms (content-based and collaborative filtering) derived from the architecture were proposed. The architecture was tested by selecting services using content-based as well as collaborative algorithms. The performances of the algorithms were evaluated using response time. Their effectiveness was evaluated using recall and precision. The results showed that the content-based recommender system is more effective than the collaborative filtering recommender system. Furthermore, the results showed that the content-based technique is more time-efficient than the collaborative filtering technique

Privacy Challenges in Ambient Intelligence Systems

peer reviewedToday, privacy is a key concept. It is also one which is rapidly evolving with technological advances, and there is no consensus on a single definition for it. In fact, the concept of privacy has been defined in many different ways, ranging from the “right to be left alone” to being a “commodity” that can be bought and sold. In the same time, powerful Ambient Intelligence (AmI) systems are being developed, that deploy context-aware, personalised, adaptive and anticipatory services. In such systems personal data is vastly collected, stored, and distributed, making privacy preservation a critical issue. The human- centred focus of AmI systems has prompted the introduction of new kinds of technologies, e.g. Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET), and methodologies, e.g. Privacy by Design (PbD), whereby privacy concerns are included in the design of the system. One particular application field, where privacy preservation is of critical importance is Ambient Assisted Living (AAL). Emerging from the continuous increase of the ageing population, AAL focuses on intelligent systems of assistance for a better, healthier and safer life in their living environment. In this paper, we first build on our previous work, in which we introduced a new tripartite categorisation of privacy as a right, an enabler, and a commodity. Second, we highlight the specific privacy issues raised in AAL. Third, we review and discuss current approaches for privacy preservation. Finally, drawing on lessons learned from AAL, we provide insights on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Part of our methodology is a statistical analysis performed on the IEEE publications database. We illustrate our work with AAL scenarios elaborated in cooperation with the city of Luxembourg

The Balance between the Data Protection Law Regime and Modern Technologies: Collision or Collaboration? − A Comparative Study of Regulatory Instruments in the EU and Taiwan

The aim of this thesis is to discuss and evaluate how to strike a balance between the benefits and the risks of biometric and Radio-frequency Identification (RFID) technologies within a data protection regime. This presents a problem because of the lack of an applicable theoretical framework and clear guidelines and principles for legal regulations to deal with such technologies. The theory chosen here is the Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC), which has been justified as the basic principle of human rights in any given community. This thesis then elaborates on specific applications of the PGC in relation to various issues by defining relevant privacy concepts and describing how they are analysed to allow the identification, evaluation, and comparison of competing rights and interests in a specific conflict. Probing and evaluating current regulation of technologies at stake in Europe and Taiwan, it is argued that the right to benefit from advances in science and technology and the right to privacy are bound to come into conflict. However, it is problematic to suggest that the balancing of competing rights is a zero-sum trade-off. Instead, in line with the broad concept of privacy, it is contended that there is the possibility for the two sets of values to support each other. In this case, the thesis suggests a co-operative framework, which relies on a consistent approach to maintain valid consent, precautionary and preventive measures to tackle the risks of developing such technologies, and an independent institutional framework for personal data protection. Lastly, the thesis proposes a PGC-derived regulatory framework and model for Taiwan. As the Formosan hydra-headed bureaucracy model generates inconsistent data protection consequences, it is suggested that an institutional framework comprising an independent regulatory body might be able to assist the success of the co-operative model more effectively