Trust and Privacy Permissions for an Ambient World

Ambient intelligence (AmI) and ubiquitous computing allow us to consider a future where computation is embedded into our daily social lives. This vision raises its own important questions and augments the need to understand how people will trust such systems and at the same time achieve and maintain privacy. As a result, we have recently conducted a wide reaching study of people’s attitudes to potential AmI scenarios with a view to eliciting their privacy concerns. This chapter describes recent research related to privacy and trust with regard to ambient technology. The method used in the study is described and findings discussed

Investigating privacy in an ambient world

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) and ubiquitous computing allow us to consider a future where computation is embedded into our daily social lives. This vision raises its own important questions and augments the need to understand how people will achieve and maintain privacy. As a result, we have recently conducted a wide reaching study of people’s attitudes to potential AmI scenarios with a view to eliciting their privacy concerns. The focus of this paper will be on the method used and preliminary findings will be discussed

Averting Robot Eyes

Home robots will cause privacy harms. At the same time, they can provide beneficial services—as long as consumers trust them. This Essay evaluates potential technological solutions that could help home robots keep their promises, avert their eyes, and otherwise mitigate privacy harms. Our goals are to inform regulators of robot-related privacy harms and the available technological tools for mitigating them, and to spur technologists to employ existing tools and develop new ones by articulating principles for avoiding privacy harms. We posit that home robots will raise privacy problems of three basic types: (1) data privacy problems; (2) boundary management problems; and (3) social/relational problems. Technological design can ward off, if not fully prevent, a number of these harms. We propose five principles for home robots and privacy design: data minimization, purpose specifications, use limitations, honest anthropomorphism, and dynamic feedback and participation. We review current research into privacy-sensitive robotics, evaluating what technological solutions are feasible and where the harder problems lie. We close by contemplating legal frameworks that might encourage the implementation of such design, while also recognizing the potential costs of regulation at these early stages of the technology

Semi-autonomous, context-aware, agent using behaviour modelling and reputation systems to authorize data operation in the Internet of Things

In this paper we address the issue of gathering the "informed consent" of an end user in the Internet of Things. We start by evaluating the legal importance and some of the problems linked with this notion of informed consent in the specific context of the Internet of Things. From this assessment we propose an approach based on a semi-autonomous, rule based agent that centralize all authorization decisions on the personal data of a user and that is able to take decision on his behalf. We complete this initial agent by integrating context-awareness, behavior modeling and community based reputation system in the algorithm of the agent. The resulting system is a "smart" application, the "privacy butler" that can handle data operations on behalf of the end-user while keeping the user in control. We finally discuss some of the potential problems and improvements of the system.Comment: This work is currently supported by the BUTLER Project co-financed under the 7th framework program of the European Commission. published in Internet of Things (WF-IoT), 2014 IEEE World Forum, 6-8 March 2014, Seoul, P411-416, DOI: 10.1109/WF-IoT.2014.6803201, INSPEC: 1425565

Telecommunications, the Transition from Regulation to Antitrust

In recognition of the fact that the competition among telecommunications platforms that demands deregulation is not ubiquitously effective, I endorse and expatiate on the objective 'bright line' test proposed by the Canadian company TELUS for determining when and within what geographic market boundaries to deregulate. In accordance with that test, I then discuss the nature of the antitrust policy upon which falls responsibility for preserving the competition that is the logical surrogate for direct regulation. Following the rule of reason prescribed by the United States Supreme Court 95 years ago, I would have that policy concentrate on the behavior of the incumbent access providers and the intent that may logically be inferred from it. Finally, applying the two preceding expositions to the highly politically charged, largely ideological demands for a legislatively imposed rule of "network neutrality," I contend that if the two previously recommended policies are followed, such a legislative mandate would be both supererogatory and counterproductive.Technology and Industry, Regulatory Reform

Media fusion and future TV: Examining multi-screen TV convergence in Singapore

This study examines Singapore's national media blueprint and industry stakeholders' coping strategies in response to multi-screen TV development. The findings show Singapore muti-screen TV development is still at a nascent stage after launching Media Fushion and FutureTV plans in mid 2009. The policymakers play a key role to follow national media blueprint to unify the inter-industry and cross-country collaboration. TV operators and telcos are found to remediate themselves by harnessing the power of internet and mobile technologies for content innovation and distribution. To tackle the complicated convergent issues in multi-screen TV industry, this study proposes to separately regulate the technology-neutral platforms and diverse audiovisual content. It also recommends a pro-innovative policy with the light-touch licensing scheme and loose content regulation to facilitate the development of the next TV. --three-screen TV,multi-screen TV,convergence,media fusion,IPTV,mobile TV,cross-platform,TV technologies,TV market,TV policy

Tumult and turmoil : privacy in an ambient world

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) and ubiquitous computing allow us to consider a future where computation is embedded into our daily social lives. This vision raises its own important questions. Our own interest in privacy predates this impending vision, but nonetheless holds a great deal of relevance there. As a result, we have recently conducted a wide reaching study of people’s attitudes to potential AmI scenarios with a view to eliciting their privacy concerns. The approach and findings will be discussed

Implanting Life-Cycle Privacy Policies in a Context Database

Ambient intelligence (AmI) environments continuously monitor surrounding individuals' context (e.g., location, activity, etc.) to make existing applications smarter, i.e., make decision without requiring user interaction. Such AmI smartness ability is tightly coupled to quantity and quality of the available (past and present) context. However, context is often linked to an individual (e.g., location of a given person) and as such falls under privacy directives. The goal of this paper is to enable the difficult wedding of privacy (automatically fulfilling users' privacy whishes) and smartness in the AmI. interestingly, privacy requirements in the AmI are different from traditional environments, where systems usually manage durable data (e.g., medical or banking information), collected and updated trustfully either by the donor herself, her doctor, or an employee of her bank. Therefore, proper information disclosure to third parties constitutes a major privacy concern in the traditional studies