Information privacy

About: Information privacy is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 25412 publications have been published within this topic receiving 579611 citations. The topic is also known as: data privacy & data protection.

Secure anonymization for incremental datasets

Abstract: Data anonymization techniques based on the k-anonymity model have been the focus of intense research in the last few years. Although the k-anonymity model and the related techniques provide valuable solutions to data privacy, current solutions are limited only to static data release (i.e., the entire dataset is assumed to be available at the time of release). While this may be acceptable in some applications, today we see databases continuously growing everyday and even every hour. In such dynamic environments, the current techniques may suffer from poor data quality and/or vulnerability to inference. In this paper, we analyze various inference channels that may exist in multiple anonymized datasets and discuss how to avoid such inferences. We then present an approach to securely anonymizing a continuously growing dataset in an efficient manner while assuring high data quality.

Privacy as Intellectual Property

Abstract: Some economists and privacy advocates have proposed giving individuals property rights in their personal data to promote information privacy in cyberspace. A property rights approach would allow individuals to negotiate with firms about the uses to which they are willing to have personal data put and would force businesses to internalize a higher proportion of the societal costs of personal data processing. However, granting individuals property rights in personal information is unlikely to achieve information privacy goals in part because a key mechanism of property law, namely, the general policy favoring free alienability of such rights, would more likely defeat than achieve information privacy goals. Drawing upon certain concepts from the unfair competition-based law of trade secrecy, this article suggests that information privacy law needs to impose minimum standards of commercial morality on firms engaged in the processing of personal data and proposes that certain default licensing rules of trade secrecy law may be adapted to protect personal information in cyberspace.

Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century

Abstract: Fifty years ago, in 1984, George Orwell imagined a future in which privacy was demolished by a totalitarian state that used spies, video surveillance, historical revisionism, and control over the media to maintain its power. Those who worry about personal privacy and identity--especially in this day of technologies that encroach upon these rights--still use Orwell's "Big Brother" language to discuss privacy issues. But the reality is that the age of a monolithic Big Brother is over. And yet the threats are perhaps even more likely to destroy the rights we've assumed were ours. Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century shows how, in these early years of the 21st century, advances in technology endanger our privacy in ways never before imagined. Direct marketers and retailers track our every purchase; surveillance cameras observe our movements; mobile phones will soon report our location to those who want to track us; government eavesdroppers listen in on private communications; misused medical records turn our bodies and our histories against us; and linked databases assemble detailed consumer profiles used to predict and influence our behavior. Privacy--the most basic of our civil rights--is in grave peril. Simson Garfinkel--journalist, entrepreneur, and international authority on computer security--has devoted his career to testing new technologies and warning about their implications. This newly revised update of the popular hardcover edition of Database Nation is his compelling account of how invasive technologies will affect our lives in the coming years. It's a timely, far-reaching, entertaining, and thought-provoking look at the serious threats to privacy facing us today. The book poses a disturbing question: how can we protect our basic rights to privacy, identity, and autonomy when technology is making invasion and control easier than ever before? Garfinkel's captivating blend of journalism, storytelling, and futurism is a call to arms. It will frighten, entertain, and ultimately convince us that we must take action now to protect our privacy and identity before it's too late.

Monitoring patients via a secure and mobile healthcare system

Abstract: Patient monitoring provides flexible and powerful patient surveillance through wearable devices at any time and anywhere The increasing feasibility and convenience of mobile healthcare has already introduced several significant challenges for healthcare providers, policy makers, hospitals, and patients A major challenge is to provide round-the-clock healthcare services to those patients who require it via wearable wireless medical devices Furthermore, many patients have privacy concerns when it comes to releasing their personal information over open wireless channels As a consequence, one of the most important and challenging issues that healthcare providers must deal with is how to secure the personal information of patients and to eliminate their privacy concerns In this article we present several techniques that can be used to monitor patients effectively and enhance the functionality of telemedicine systems, and discuss how current secure strategies can impede the attacks faced by wireless communications in healthcare systems and improve the security of mobile healthcare