SECURITY, PRIVACY AND APPLICATIONS IN VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

With wireless vehicular communications, Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) enable numerous applications to enhance traffic safety, traffic efficiency, and driving experience. However, VANETs also impose severe security and privacy challenges which need to be thoroughly investigated. In this dissertation, we enhance the security, privacy, and applications of VANETs, by 1) designing application-driven security and privacy solutions for VANETs, and 2) designing appealing VANET applications with proper security and privacy assurance. First, the security and privacy challenges of VANETs with most application significance are identified and thoroughly investigated. With both theoretical novelty and realistic considerations, these security and privacy schemes are especially appealing to VANETs. Specifically, multi-hop communications in VANETs suffer from packet dropping, packet tampering, and communication failures which have not been satisfyingly tackled in literature. Thus, a lightweight reliable and faithful data packet relaying framework (LEAPER) is proposed to ensure reliable and trustworthy multi-hop communications by enhancing the cooperation of neighboring nodes. Message verification, including both content and signature verification, generally is computation-extensive and incurs severe scalability issues to each node. The resource-aware message verification (RAMV) scheme is proposed to ensure resource-aware, secure, and application-friendly message verification in VANETs. On the other hand, to make VANETs acceptable to the privacy-sensitive users, the identity and location privacy of each node should be properly protected. To this end, a joint privacy and reputation assurance (JPRA) scheme is proposed to synergistically support privacy protection and reputation management by reconciling their inherent conflicting requirements. Besides, the privacy implications of short-time certificates are thoroughly investigated in a short-time certificates-based privacy protection (STCP2) scheme, to make privacy protection in VANETs feasible with short-time certificates. Secondly, three novel solutions, namely VANET-based ambient ad dissemination (VAAD), general-purpose automatic survey (GPAS), and VehicleView, are proposed to support the appealing value-added applications based on VANETs. These solutions all follow practical application models, and an incentive-centered architecture is proposed for each solution to balance the conflicting requirements of the involved entities. Besides, the critical security and privacy challenges of these applications are investigated and addressed with novel solutions. Thus, with proper security and privacy assurance, these solutions show great application significance and economic potentials to VANETs. Thus, by enhancing the security, privacy, and applications of VANETs, this dissertation fills the gap between the existing theoretic research and the realistic implementation of VANETs, facilitating the realistic deployment of VANETs

Indigenous Language Revitalization in British Columbia: Yuneŝit’in strategies for Nenqayni ch’ih or the Tŝilhqot’in language

530 p.Nenqayni ch'ih edo Tîlhqot'in hizkuntza Dene (Atabaskera) familiako mintzaira bat da eta Kanadako Columbia Britaniarreko barnealdean hitz egiten da. Probintziako hizkuntza indigenen artean bizitasun mailarik handiena du, hiztun kopuru handia ez ezik (4.352 Tîlhqot'in-en %19,9; 864 pertsona inguru), hiztun gazteak ere badituelako. Hala ere, Tîlhqot'in-a desagertzeko arriskuan dago; izan ere, belaunaldiz belaunaldiko transmisioa eten egin da, eta, gaur egun, ez da jada umeen ama-hizkuntza. Sei Tîlhqot'in komunitate daude, eta ikerketa hau horietako batean oinarrituta dago: Yune'it'in-en (Gex nats¿enaghilht¿i jatorriz). Ikerketak Tîlhqot'in ikasteko eta hizkuntza komunitatean biziberritzeko estrategiak eta baliabideak identifikatzea dauka helburu nagusitzat. Bigarren mailako beste helburuak ondorengo hauek dira: Yune'it'in komunitateko kideen hizkuntza jakite-maila eta erabilera deskribatzea, komunitateko hizkuntza-galeraren arrazoiak ezagutzea, eta hizkuntza biziberritzearen garrantzia azaltzea. Lan honek metodologia indigena delakoari eta elkarlana, parte-hartzea eta komunitatearen jakintza oinarri dituen ikerketa-ereduari jarraitzen die. Komunitatearen iritziak biltzeko metodoak hauek izan dira: behaketa parte-hartzailea, erdi-bideratutako solasaldia, sharing circle (partekatutako zirkulua), eta dokumentu-azterketa (batzar-agiriak, hizkuntza-materialak, eta horiekin lotutako bestelako baliabideak)

La protection de la vie privée au temps de la biosécurité

Cette thèse s’intéresse à la protection de la vie privée informationnelle dans le contexte de la biosécurité. La biosécurité se définit comme le processus qui vise à prendre en charge, dans une optique de sécurité nationale, les menaces et dangers que représentent les épidémies de maladies infectieuses pour la santé des populations humaines et la sécurité de l’État. Notre projet remet en question l’idée selon laquelle la conduite des activités de surveillance de la santé publique implique nécessairement une diminution de la protection offerte aux renseignements personnels sur la santé. Nos recherches tendent à démontrer que la conciliation de la surveillance de la santé et la protection de la vie privée est non seulement possible, mais qu’elle est surtout nécessaire. Nous portons plus précisément notre attention sur le cas de la collecte et de l’utilisation de renseignements dépersonnalisés sur la santé par les systèmes de surveillance syndromique. Bien calibrée et soigneusement réglementée, cette forme novatrice et particulière de surveillance offrirait le double avantage de réduire les risques d’atteintes à la vie privée des individus et d’augmenter de manière considérable l’efficacité des capacités étatiques en matière de détection des épidémies.This thesis focuses on the protection of privacy in the context of biosecurity. Biosecurity is concerned with the threats that epidemics of infectious diseases present to public health and national security. The main goal of my thesis is to challenge the idea that conducting meaningful public health surveillance necessarily implies that the scope of the legal protection given to personal health information has to be reduced. My research demonstrates that, given certain conditions, a public health surveillance conducted with carefully configured syndromic surveillance systems operating with de-identified health data would increase both the efficiency of surveillance in terms of its capacity to detect emerging epidemics and the level of informational privacy of the patients