Rights protection for relational data and sensor streams

Abstract

Information, as an expression of knowledge is probably the most valuable asset of humanity today. By enabling relatively cost-free, fast, and accurate access channels to information in digital form, computers have radically changed the way we think and express ideas. As increasingly more of it is produced, packaged and delivered in digital form in a fast, networked environment, one of its main features threatens to become its worst enemy: zero-cost verbatim copies. The inherent ability to produce duplicates of digital Works at virtually no cost can be now misused e.g. for illicit profit. This dramatically increases the requirement for effective protection mechanisms. Different avenues are available, each with its advantages and drawbacks. Enforcement by legal means is usually ineffective, unless augmented by a digital counter-part such as Information Hiding. Digital Watermarking deploys Information Hiding as a method of Rights Protection to conceal an indelible rights witness (watermark) within the digital Work to be protected. The soundness of such a method relies on the assumption that altering the Work in the process of hiding the mark does not destroy the value of the Work, and that it is difficult for a malicious adversary (Mallory) to remove or alter the mark beyond detection without destroying the value of the Work. The ability to resist attacks from such an adversary (mostly aiming at removing the embedded watermark) is one of the major concerns in the design of a sound watermarking solution. With the notable exception of software watermarking, the overwhelming majority of research efforts have been invested in the framework of multimedia data (e.g. images, video and audio). In this work, I analyze digital watermarking from a higher level, domain-independent perspective. I propose a theoretical model [Sion et al, IEEE ITCC 2002] and in [Sion et al, SPIE 2004] ask: are there any limitations to what watermarking can do? What are these and when can they be reached? I then propose, design and analyze watermarking solutions for (i) numeric sets [Sion et al, IWDW 2002], (ii) numeric relational data [Sion et al, SIGMOD 2003, ICDE 2004], (iii) categorical data [Sion, ICDE 2004], (iv) streams [Sion et al, under review] and (v) semi-structures [Sion et al, IWDW 2003, NSF EIA-9903545]. I also explored the ability to hide information in natural language text [Atallah et. al., IHW02, Springer-Verlag], and developed a text tamper-proofing proof-of-concept [Naval Research grant N00014-02-1-0364/2002].