Marit Hansen

Privacy Protection Goals and Their Implications for eID Systems

Protection goals such as confidentiality, integrity and availability have proved to be successful in evaluating information security risks and choosing appropriate safeguards. The recently developed privacy-specific protection goals unlinkability, transparency and intervenability complement these classic goals and thereby provide cornerstones to define requirements concerning information security as well as privacy and to assess solutions. This text focuses on the application of the three new protection goals to eID systems such as government-issued electronic identity cards in different settings.

Towards Displaying Privacy Information with Icons

European data protection regulation obliges every service provider to show a privacy policy on his web site. Many privacy policies are too long, too complicated to understand, and reading them is hardly appealing. To enhance the user’s awareness on who is collecting and handling their personal data for what purpose and to depict core information of the policy, privacy icons could be used in addition to written policies. Further, specific privacy icons could be helpful for expressing possible, planned or performed data processing between individuals, e.g., in social networks.

Privacy Policy Icons

Many individuals are not aware of who is collecting and handling their personal data for what purpose. Usually privacy policies are too long, too complicated to understand, and reading them is hardly appealing. To improve the awareness and comprehension of individuals on what is happening with their personal data, privacy icons are being proposed. The PrimeLife project has developed icon sets for different use cases such as e-commerce, social networks and handling of emails. It conducted user tests and an online survey to analyse how well users understand what the privacy icons should express. This section summarises the findings of PrimeLife’s work on privacy icons.

Delegation for Privacy Management from Womb to Tomb – A European Perspective

In our information society with processing of personal data in almost all areas of life, the legally granted right to privacy is quite hard to preserve. User-controlled identity management systems have been proposed as a means to manage one’s own private sphere. Still there is no functioning concept how privacy protection can be effectively safeguarded over a long time period and how self-determination in the field of privacy can be maintained in all stages of life from the womb to the tomb. When user control and the capability to exercise rights can not yet or no longer be carried out by the data subject herself, the decisions concerning the processing of personal data may have to be delegated to a delegate. In this text, we elaborate on delegation of privacy-relevant actions under a lifelong perspective and point out possible legal, technological, and organizational measures to appropriately take up the arising challenges. For crucial gaps in current concepts we sketch solutions and explain implications on user-controlled identity management systems. Finally we give recommendations to stakeholders such as data controllers, application designers and policy makers.

Requirements for identity management from the perspective of multilateral interactions

In this chapter, application scenarios for identity management systems will be discussed in order to identify requirements which should be or already are considered in the design and implementation of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs).

Identity and Privacy Issues Throughout Life

Much research and development has been done during the past couple of years to assist users in managing their partial identities in the digital world by several types of identity management [BMH05]. A comprehensive privacy-enhancing identity management system would include the following components [CK01]: an Identity Manager (IdM) on the user’s side; IdM support in applications (e.g., at content providers, web shops, etc.); various third-party services (e.g., certification authorities, identity providers).

Contributions to Standardisation

Standardisation has many goals and facets: Standards are used for consumer protection to achieve a minimum quality of certain products and services. Standards lead to lower cost because of a unified higher volume market. Standards also support interoperability that is vitally needed in ICT.

Experiences running a Web anonymising service

The research project AN.ON - Anonymity online focuses on developing and providing a Web anonymising service. This service provides anonymity and unobservability against external observers, the users ISP and the operators of the service themselves. AN.ON is being promoted by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs for three years (2001-2003). Main criteria for the design of the Web anonymising service are security, trustworthiness, performance and usability. Of utmost importance is legal compliance, especially with respect to data protection law. In the submitted paper the project partners, Dresden University of Technology resp. Freie Universitat Berlin and Independent Centre for Privacy Protection Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, describe technical background, legal topics, economic issues, socio-political side effects and practical experiences in developing and operating this Web anonymising service.

Andreas Pfitzmann 1958-2010: Pioneer of Technical Privacy Protection in the Information Society

On September 23rd 2010, Prof. Dr. Andreas Pfitzmann died at the age 52 after a short but serious illness. The focus of his reasoning had been the individual and with him the society, in which he lives. During his life as a researcher Andreas Pfitzmann contributed decisively and groundbreakingly to the technical implementation of the constitutional right to informational self-determination.

Zur Fortentwicklung des Datenschutzes

Vielfaltige Innovationen in der Informationstechnik, in digitalen Infrastrukturen, in allgegenwartigen Anwendungen und in der Massendatenverarbeitung erzeugen fundamentale Herausforderungen fur den Schutz von Grundrechten und Freiheiten. Neue Entwicklungen in der Informationstechnik wie Kunstliche Intelligenz, automatisierte selbstlernende Systeme, vielfaltigste Sensoren zur Erfassung der korperlichen Welt, Bilderkennung, Emotionsanalyse, Roboter und andere Assistenzsysteme sowie individualisierte Dienste und Produkte sammeln und verarbeiten personenbezogene Daten. Digitale Infrastrukturen wie Suchmaschinen, Social Networks, Kommunikations- und Logistikdienste bilden das Ruckgrat der digitalen Gesellschaft.