PRESERVING PRIVACY IN DATA RELEASE

Data sharing and dissemination play a key role in our information society. Not only do they prove to be advantageous to the involved parties, but they can also be fruitful to the society at large (e.g., new treatments for rare diseases can be discovered based on real clinical trials shared by hospitals and pharmaceutical companies). The advancements in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) make the process of releasing a data collection simpler than ever. The availability of novel computing paradigms, such as data outsourcing and cloud computing, make scalable, reliable and fast infrastructures a dream come true at reasonable costs. As a natural consequence of this scenario, data owners often rely on external storage servers for releasing their data collections, thus delegating the burden of data storage and management to the service provider. Unfortunately, the price to be paid when releasing a collection of data is in terms of unprecedented privacy risks. Data collections often include sensitive information, not intended for disclosure, that should be properly protected. The problem of protecting privacy in data release has been under the attention of the research and development communities for a long time. However, the richness of released data, the large number of available sources, and the emerging outsourcing/cloud scenarios raise novel problems, not addressed by traditional approaches, which need enhanced solutions. In this thesis, we define a comprehensive approach for protecting sensitive information when large collections of data are publicly or selectively released by their owners. In a nutshell, this requires protecting data explicitly included in the release, as well as protecting information not explicitly released but that could be exposed by the release, and ensuring that access to released data be allowed only to authorized parties according to the data owners\u2019 policies. More specifically, these three aspects translate to three requirements, addressed by this thesis, which can be summarized as follows. The first requirement is the protection of data explicitly included in a release. While intuitive, this requirement is complicated by the fact that privacy-enhancing techniques should not prevent recipients from performing legitimate analysis on the released data but, on the contrary, should ensure sufficient visibility over non sensitive information. We therefore propose a solution, based on a novel formulation of the fragmentation approach, that vertically fragments a data collection so to satisfy requirements for both information protection and visibility, and we complement it with an effective means for enriching the utility of the released data. The second requirement is the protection of data not explicitly included in a release. As a matter of fact, even a collection of non sensitive data might enable recipients to infer (possibly sensitive) information not explicitly disclosed but that somehow depends on the released information (e.g., the release of the treatment with which a patient is being cared can leak information about her disease). To address this requirement, starting from a real case study, we propose a solution for counteracting the inference of sensitive information that can be drawn observing peculiar value distributions in the released data collection. The third requirement is access control enforcement. Available solutions fall short for a variety of reasons. Traditional access control mechanisms are based on a reference monitor and do not fit outsourcing/cloud scenarios, since neither the data owner is willing, nor the cloud storage server is trusted, to enforce the access control policy. Recent solutions for access control enforcement in outsourcing scenarios assume outsourced data to be read-only and cannot easily manage (dynamic) write authorizations. We therefore propose an approach for efficiently supporting grant and revoke of write authorizations, building upon the selective encryption approach, and we also define a subscription-based authorization policy, to fit real-world scenarios where users pay for a service and access the resources made available during their subscriptions. The main contributions of this thesis can therefore be summarized as follows. With respect to the protection of data explicitly included in a release, our original results are: i) a novel modeling of the fragmentation problem; ii) an efficient technique for computing a fragmentation, based on reduced Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams (OBDDs) to formulate the conditions that a fragmentation must satisfy; iii) the computation of a minimal fragmentation not fragmenting data more than necessary, with the definition of both an exact and an heuristic algorithms, which provides faster computational time while well approximating the exact solutions; and iv) the definition of loose associations, a sanitized form of the sensitive associations broken by fragmentation that can be safely released, specifically extended to operate on arbitrary fragmentations. With respect to the protection of data not explicitly included in a release, our original results are: i) the definition of a novel and unresolved inference scenario, raised from a real case study where data items are incrementally released upon request; ii) the definition of several metrics to assess the inference exposure due to a data release, based upon the concepts of mutual information, Kullback-Leibler distance between distributions, Pearson\u2019s cumulative statistic, and Dixon\u2019s coefficient; and iii) the identification of a safe release with respect to the considered inference channel and the definition of the controls to be enforced to guarantee that no sensitive information be leaked releasing non sensitive data items. With respect to access control enforcement, our original results are: i) the management of dynamic write authorizations, by defining a solution based on selective encryption for efficiently and effectively supporting grant and revoke of write authorizations; ii) the definition of an effective technique to guarantee data integrity, so to allow the data owner and the users to verify that modifications to a resource have been produced only by authorized users; and iii) the modeling and enforcement of a subscription-based authorization policy, to support scenarios where both the set of users and the set of resources change frequently over time, and users\u2019 authorizations are based on their subscriptions

An Introduction to Database Systems

This textbook introduces the basic concepts of database systems. These concepts are presented through numerous examples in modeling and design. The material in this book is geared to an introductory course in database systems offered at the junior or senior level of Computer Science. It could also be used in a first year graduate course in database systems, focusing on a selection of the advanced topics in the latter chapters

Applications

Volume 3 describes how resource-aware machine learning methods and techniques are used to successfully solve real-world problems. The book provides numerous specific application examples: in health and medicine for risk modelling, diagnosis, and treatment selection for diseases in electronics, steel production and milling for quality control during manufacturing processes in traffic, logistics for smart cities and for mobile communications

Applications

Volume 3 describes how resource-aware machine learning methods and techniques are used to successfully solve real-world problems. The book provides numerous specific application examples: in health and medicine for risk modelling, diagnosis, and treatment selection for diseases in electronics, steel production and milling for quality control during manufacturing processes in traffic, logistics for smart cities and for mobile communications

Introduction: Ways of Machine Seeing

How do machines, and, in particular, computational technologies, change the way we see the world? This special issue brings together researchers from a wide range of disciplines to explore the entanglement of machines and their ways of seeing from new critical perspectives. This 'editorial' is for a special issue of AI & Society, which includes contributions from: María Jesús Schultz Abarca, Peter Bell, Tobias Blanke, Benjamin Bratton, Claudio Celis Bueno, Kate Crawford, Iain Emsley, Abelardo Gil-Fournier, Daniel Chávez Heras, Vladan Joler, Nicolas Malevé, Lev Manovich, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Perle Møhl, Bruno Moreschi, Fabian Offert, Trevor Paglan, Jussi Parikka, Luciana Parisi, Matteo Pasquinelli, Gabriel Pereira, Carloalberto Treccani, Rebecca Uliasz, and Manuel van der Veen

International law reconceptualised: the role of NGOs.

International law has largely adhered to its traditional foundations, centring upon states as the pre-eminent actors. States have generally remained as the main subjects of international law, and state-centric considerations such as their jurisdiction, sovereignty and relations with other states, the law's main concern. There has been a general lack of attention, or sufficient attention, to the 'other' international players now common in the twenty-first century. This is concerning. A greater recognition and acceptance of these 'other' international players is needed, and this could lead to the reconceptualisation of international law in the twenty-first century. The development of international law from the central tenets of its Westphalian inception to a form that adequately reflects modern international society is required. A failure of evolution could bring about its irrelevance. The reconceptualisation of the paradigm of international law in a way that makes it more reflective of contemporary realities would lead to its enduring relevance. A failure to adapt could be its downfall. The Westphalian conception of international law can be seen as the glue that holds the international legal framework together; shaping and defining the space within which states relate. However, in the twenty-first century, other actors have come to play a real role in that international space, and have done so actively and relevantly. Expectedly, the proliferation of activities by these new players in the international space has worn the adhesive attribute of the proverbial glue of the Westphalian notion of international law. It is becoming more apparent that the reconceptualisation of the international legal paradigm is necessary. Amongst the new players, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) play a prominent role. NGOs have played and continue to play a highly relevant and important role in today's global community. Their influence and impact are becoming increasingly pivotal to the legal, social, economic and political construct of today's global community, and their role remains central to the reconceptualisation of international law and the international legal framework. This thesis argues that NGOs must play a central role in the imperative that is the reconceptualisation of the international legal paradigm to maintain its fitness for purpose in the face of globalisation

Dipterocarps protected by Jering local wisdom in Jering Menduyung Nature Recreational Park, Bangka Island, Indonesia

Apart of the oil palm plantation expansion, the Jering Menduyung Nature Recreational Park has relatively diverse plants. The 3,538 ha park is located at the north west of Bangka Island, Indonesia. The minimum species-area curve was 0.82 ha which is just below Dalil conservation forest that is 1.2 ha, but it is much higher than measurements of several secondary forests in the Island that are 0.2 ha. The plot is inhabited by more than 50 plant species. Of 22 tree species, there are 40 individual poles with the average diameter of 15.3 cm, and 64 individual trees with the average diameter of 48.9 cm. The density of Dipterocarpus grandiflorus (Blanco) Blanco or kruing, is 20.7 individual/ha with the diameter ranges of 12.1 – 212.7 cm or with the average diameter of 69.0 cm. The relatively intact park is supported by the local wisdom of Jering tribe, one of indigenous tribes in the island. People has regulated in cutting trees especially in the cape. The conservation agency designates the park as one of the kruing propagules sources in the province. The growing oil palm plantation and the less adoption of local wisdom among the youth is a challenge to forest conservation in the province where tin mining activities have been the economic driver for decades. More socialization from the conservation agency and the involvement of university students in raising environmental awareness is important to be done