The EU is giving its own answer to the challenge of protecting personal data on the Internet. Since 2011, Brussels has given the "green light" to the 4-year research project ABC4Trust (Privacy Attribute Based Credentials). Its goal is to develop technologies to protect the privacy of the individual and on September 29, at a conference to be held in Athens, the results of this effort will be presented.
As Professor Yiannis Stamatiou, a member of ABC4Trust, explains through "K", their research aims to "protect privacy based on some special authentication technologies, which allow the user to reveal only those information that are necessary for the service. It can expose only those parts of their identity that they deem or that are absolutely necessary for using the service. For example, a service may require someone to be a Greek citizen. Then the user proves this with these digital identities that we developed. Or it may require that they be an adult. For example, an online gambling website. In this case, the user only reveals their age. Thus, they avoid "filing", what is called "profiling", that is, the service building a profile of the user and harassing them later with advertisements, etc. It also avoids being blackmailed if, for example, someone reveals that they visit specific websites.
With these new technologies there is controlled user identification.".
According to the head of the European consortium ABC4Trust and a senior executive at Deutsche Telekom, Professor Kai Ranenberg, “right now a large part of our personal data management goes through Facebook. For example, when you go to a website and use Facebook to log in, every time you do so, the social network records where you logged in and learns more about you. With ABC4Trust technologies, you won’t have to constantly inform Facebook about your online movements.” The current online reality in the field of personal data sharing is recorded in “Orwellian” ways by people who research and defend the protection of personal data. After all, Edward Snowden, at the age of 29, went so far as to renounce his $200,000 a year from Booz Allen – a company that collaborated with the NSA – the normality of his life and his partner to become an exiled fugitive, aiming to change the public debate on the national security-privacy dichotomy.
Professor George Mitakidis, chairman of the "Digital Enlightenment Forum" organization, a participant in the creation of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), analyzes in "K" the need for this dialogue: "We need it to see where we want to go. It should not be a given that these technologies have a direction on their own. We are at a turning point and we need to change course a little and answer the question: what is the digital society we want? The need for a dialogue at the national and intergovernmental level is being established, so that we can reach a common understanding of what the opportunities are and what the risks are. To reach a point where we can make common decisions, which will constitute a kind of compromise. A balance must be found so that the competent authorities can control potential risks to public safety, but at the same time allow people to live and work without being under the full, involuntary or voluntary, supervision of one or more big brothers.”.
Analyzing the issue in "K", Professor Kai Ranenberg explains that Snowden's revelations "were nothing new. However, for many people, the dangers of secret surveillance and information management have now become so obvious that their trust in telecommunications structures and providers has shrunk massively, at least for some time. In any case, the relationship between trust in online services and security needs to be thoroughly investigated.".
Users leave their traces everywhere..
“Today, unfortunately, we are in an ocean of services where users recklessly leave information everywhere. They themselves are destroying their privacy,” emphasizes Mr. Stamatiou. “Everyone has made it their goal to use as many and better services as they can. So I would say that today we are at a dangerous turning point in the issue of privacy protection,” says the scientific advisor of the Institute of Computer Technology and Publishing (ICTP) and associate professor at the University of Patras. “We have more and more frequent violations of private data and imagine how many are not made known. The identification services of companies are essentially trivial. The user is vulnerable to the mass recording of all his information, to the sale of personal data and to anything that has to do with his personal identity. I think it is time for a major campaign to inform citizens about their privacy and how it can be protected. Otherwise we risk being in a society in which each of us is a subordinate of a large data collection company. This is the great danger that I personally see,” Mr. Stamatiou points out.
Mr. Ranenberg takes another step into the future and examines how complex the conditions will become with the development of the Internet of Things. “The point is that there will be many devices around us that will ‘feel’ us. Cameras, sensors, and so on. For example, let’s assume that your car is connected to a navigation service. It tracks and records where you go and what you do, as well as your destination. In general, all aspects of your life are recorded. It could be a car, it could be your refrigerator, your house. All objects collect data about you and which are pieces of a larger picture.”.
The findings and technologies developed within ABC4Trust may constitute a safe way out of the mass surveillance environment that has been formed. However, many similar EU projects, despite their promising results, have not reached adoption and implementation. As Mr. Stamatiou states, “this is the big problem of all major Community projects. They are done with enthusiasm, publications are produced, but when the critical moment comes for all this to be adopted by the industry, so to speak, the services, then there we have the well-known inertia of companies. This is due either to the fact that they are rigid in changing the systems they have had for many years, or are unwilling to do so. Imagine that some companies make money from the absence of privacy protection”.
As Mr. Mitakidis argues, the adoption of new data protection technologies by the EU is not a sufficient condition, other states must follow suit. "We are talking about the digital world, the new structures that intersect horizontally, are not limited by state borders. The EU has managed to have a unified policy, but that is not enough. Other countries must follow suit, including the US. One cannot fail to take into account what is happening in China. There are different positions, but no longer as they were before the Snowden revelations. They had a beneficial effect in terms of a rapprochement of positions between Europe and the US. Things are not as adversarial as they were 1-2 years ago.".
When people become numbers without identity
The new world of big data can be both wonderful and terrifying. It is the realm of statistics and applied mathematics where the individual is crushed to the level of the unit and his behavior is studied on a massive scale. As stated in the research “Six Challenges for Big Data” by Dana Boyd and Kate Crawford (2011), “the era of big data has begun. Computer scientists, physicists, economists, mathematicians, political scientists, geneticists, sociologists, and many others are clamoring for access to the massive amounts of information produced by and about people, things, and the interactions between them.”.
Big Data
According to Mr. Mitakidis, “the fact that is causing concern is that now the computational capabilities in storage and processing have reached a point where you can draw conclusions without even sampling. Governments and other organizations were collecting data before, but they couldn’t keep it for long or they couldn’t process it. Now it doesn’t even have to be a government or a large company. You can process huge volumes of data without taking samples. What is called Big Data opens up new avenues that can lead to the production of useful new services and products, but at the same time they increase the risk for personal data by leaps and bounds.
ABC4 Trust also offers a way out in the field of big data. According to Mr. Stamatiou, “in a big data experiment there is interest in having user data certified: for example, nationality, age, profession, but the name is not important. Thus, the user has an incentive to provide their data and not reveal their identity.
Safe network for parents, students and teachers
The use of existing social networks is common practice in many schools and universities. However, the risks and threats to students’ privacy are a given. The pilot created within the framework of ABC4Trust provides a social network for exchanging information that protects the identity of the participants. Parents and teachers can communicate with each other securely, while the same applies to students or school services. The identification of the participants has been done before their participation in the school social network, and thus, within it, they can operate either anonymously or under a pseudonym. “By leveraging the identity protection technologies of ABC4Trust, the participants are the ones who control the level of access to their personal information,” says Suhail Btseri, of Eurodocs AB, who set up the relevant system.
The network was piloted for a year and its acceptance by users was particularly encouraging.
In Patras
A similar pilot system was created in Patras where students anonymously evaluated the courses in which they participated. With a basic parameter of participation in the service, student status and a minimum number of lecture attendance, users gain anonymous access to the evaluation of teachers. Upon entering the auditorium, a smart card identifies them. “The students who participated in the Patras pilot program confirmed our belief in the effectiveness and usability of “Privacy-ABC” technologies. They also believe that they can help protect their personal data in many other services, such as social networks, blogs, e-shopping,” said Mr. Stamatiou.
Source: kathimerini.gr
