Discreet Service Provision in Smart Environments

Discreet DIT-PRJ-07-071

Homepage http://www.ist-discreet.org/
Status NOT active project
DISI role Partner
Project type Research Project
Dimension International
Acquisition date 2007-12-03
Start date 2005-12-01
End date 2008-02-29

Project details

Project astract Advances in communication, tracking, processing and sensing technologies are boosting the deployment of context-aware personalized services and are laying the basis for monitoring and surveillance solutions improving the safety of citizens. However, they pose a serious risk on user privacy rights.<br/>The collection of personal and contextual data, in particular when integrated over various information sources, and their disclosure to various infrastructure operators and service providers, may turn out as a serious obstacle for the practical deployment of innovative services, either due to contradictions to the legal requirements or simply due to mistrust of the users.<br/>The central goal of Discreet is the design, specification and implementation of a distributed framework, called Discreet-Core (D-Core). The D-core is a fully distributed middleware which acts as a distributed entity of mediation, and provides primitives to properly manage privacy related data. <br/>Discreet remarks that privacy is not a simple on/off attribute, but there are a whole spectrum of possible privacy levels. On the left side of the picture the perfect secrecy is provided by impeding access to any user-related data: this hardly allows to provide a context-aware, personalized, and accountable service to the users. On the right side, a system with open access to all the user data clearly guarantees highly personalized service provisioning, but leaves the customers with a unique option: consent to the processing of their data. Customers do not receive any guarantee on how processing, distribution, and storage of their data will be secured and protected. On top of that, they also aren't provided with any information on which data processing will occur, who will be the specific subjects involved in the providing of the services, how much personal information will be disclosed in the service chain, and of which type. Not being aware of the number and kind of personal information disclosed, users cannot make conscious decisions on the privacy standards they deem acceptable, and, worse, not being aware of the involvement of these subjects, they will know that some of their personal data have been disclosed and used by third parties only when their privacy or their right to data protection is infringed.<br/>More info in http://www.ist-discreet.org/
Fundings 2350000 €
Partners
  • DIT - UniTN
  • National Inter-University Consortium for Telecomunication - CNIT (IT)
  • CEA-LETI (FR)
  • Eyeled (DE)
  • Starbeam (IT)
  • Baker & McKenzie (IT)
  • Cocalis & Psarras (GR)
  • Thales (FR)
  • National Technical University of Athens - (ICCS) (GR)
  • University of Munich (DE)
  • University of Surrey (UK)

DISI Sub-project details

Project astract The work of DIT concentrates on the following topics:<br/>- Discreet architecture for privacy: Perhaps one of the most characterizing aspect of our project is the attempt to provide a layered view for privacy provision. UNITN is partly in charge of architecture definition, separating Discreet functionality to four layers: the environment and wireless communication enhancement layer (DL0); the layer providing communication confidentiality over IP (DL1); the identity management layer (DL2); and the policy-based access control layer (DL3).<br/>- Protection against statistical traffic analysis: DIT, in collaboration with UNIROMA2, develops and implements the Traffic Flow Confidentiality security protocol as part of the IPsec security framework. Traffic Flow Confidentiality is used in DL1 to protect against traffic analysis attacks such as website fingerprinting and traffic classification. It also interacts with the anonymous routing overlay in order to decorrelate incoming and outgoing traffic flows in anonymous overlay routers.<br/>- Anonymous routing: An IPsec based anonymous routing solution is developed together with UNIROMA2 and THALES.<br/>- Social analyis: DIT, in collaboration with the Department of Sociology of UNITN also contributes to the project by providing social analysis of privacy perception and technology use.<br/><br/>
Fundings 105000 €
Manager Renato Antonio Lo Cigno
Participating RP