In this paper, we investigate people’s perception of datafication and surveillance in Amsterdam Smart City. Based on a series of focus groups, we show how people understand new forms of hypervisbility, what strategies they use to navigate these experiences, and what the limitations of these strategies are. We show how people tried to discern between public and private sector actors, to differentiate who they trusted by building on the existing social contract. People also trusted the objectivity of data in relation to prior experiences of social contexts and discrimination. Lastly, we show how the experiences of some of the inhabitants in our study who were most vulnerable to hypervisibility highlight the limits to strategies based on the neutrality of data. By asking about perceived surveillance rather than emphasising actual practices of surveilling, we show differentiated contexts and strategies, providing empirical grounds to question the dominant technical framing of smart cities.
With the rapid development of communication technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) is getting out of its infancy, into full maturity, and tends to be developed in an explosively rapid way, with more and more data transmitted and processed. As a result, the ability to manage devices deployed worldwide has been given more and advanced requirements in practical application performances. Most existing IoT platforms are highly centralized architectures, which suffer from various technical limitations, such as a cyber-attack and single point of failure. A new solution direction is essential to enhance data accessing, while regulating it with government mandates in privacy and security. In this paper, we propose an integrated IoT platform using blockchain technology to guarantee sensing data integrity. The aim of this platform is to afford the device owner a practical application that provides a comprehensive, immutable log and allows easy access to their devices deployed in different domains. It also provides characteristics of general IoT systems, allows for real-time monitoring, and control between the end user and device. The business logic of the application is defined by the smart contract, which contains rules and conditions. The proposed approach is backed by a proof of concept implementation in realistic IoT scenarios, utilizing Raspberry Pi devices and a permissioned network called Hyperledger Fabric. Lastly, a benchmark study using various performance metrics is made to highlight the significance of the proposed work. The analysis results indicate that the designed platform is suitable for the resource-constrained IoT architecture and is scalable to be extended in various IoT scenarios.
May 1, 2019·2019 IEEE 5th Intl Conference on Big Data Security on Cloud (BigDataSecurity), IEEE Intl Conference on High Performance and Smart Computing, (HPSC) and IEEE Intl Conference on Intelligent Data and Security (IDS)
Blockchain technology combines the openness of the Internet with the security of cryptography to provide a way to verify key information and to establish a trust in applications such as peer-to-peer payment services. Blockchain can be used to track the healthcare transactions and can ensure authorized access to patient records and compliance with the health information protection laws. In this paper, a dual blockchain model for the healthcare sector is proposed. The model combines healthcare authority blockchains and private patient blockchains for a tamperproof permission tracking system which ensures increased security and privacy while improving record and permission redundancy. The proposed model and its possible implementation are discussed in the context of Canadian healthcare privacy legislation in Alberta.
Raphael Matile, Bruno Rodrigues, Eder J. Scheid, Burkhard Stiller
Democracy in the digital age has attracted a lot of public attention in recent years. However, bringing the human right of secrecy in voting to electronic systems is difficult. Properties, such as the possibility of verifying universally that any vote counted was indeed carrying the decision made by a voter, are often conflicting and a trade-off must be found. This paper proposes a blockchain-based electronic voting system providing explicitly cast-as-intended verifiability. By using a non-interactive zero-knowledge proof of knowledge any voter can verify that his or her encrypted vote represents the decision voted for while maintaining at the same time the secrecy of the ballot. In addition, any required cryptographic material can be generated in linear time with respect to the number of voters, making the system suitable for large scale elections, thus scalable.
The main objective of the paper is to provide an answer to the question whether new technologies such as blockchain that enter various spheres of public life are safe for users and what impact they have on national legislations. Cryptocurrencies, which are based on blockchain technology, can be used as a means of payment, investment or capital accumulation. Therefore, blockchain becomes more and more popular. The main research method used in the paper consists of the analysis of legislation and jurisprudence as well as linguistic and purposive interpretation which affects the functioning of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. The introductory part of the paper contains a general historical outline and basic principles related to blockchain technology. Real and potential threats posed by the discussed technology are also discussed in the paper as well as the question whether governments or, more broadly, the international community, offer sufficient level of protection against risks related to the use of new technologies such as blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Using blockchain to streamline logistic activities or to speed up transactions is useful in itself, but in the hands of private entities the technology may pose a risk of losing funds if not properly secured. The financial market is and should be supervised and controlled by the state which is the guarantor of economic freedom. Another vital question is whether legislators keep up with the advances in technology. It seems that the development of blockchain technology triggers development of new legal regulations. The more blockchain technology enters everyday life, the more legal documents appear in the form of case law, legal provisions, opinions etc. The role of these documents is to regulate, define and specify new technologies as they appear.
Bitcoin blockchain technology is a distributed ledger of nodes authorizing transactions between anonymous parties. Its key actors are miners using computational power to solve mathematical problems for validating transactions. By sharing blockchain's characteristics, mining is a decentralized, transparent and unregulated practice, less explored in HCI, so we know little about miners' motivations and experiences, and how these may impact on different dimensions of trust. This paper reports on interviews with 20 bitcoin miners about their practices and trust challenges. Findings contribute to HCI theories by extending the exploration of blockchain's characteristics relevant to trust with the competitiveness dimension underpinning the social organization of mining. We discuss the risks of collaborative mining due to centralization and dishonest administrators, and conclude with design implications highlighting the need for tools monitoring the distribution of rewards in collaborative mining, tools tracking data centers' authorization and reputation, and tools supporting the development of decentralized pools.
Crowdsourcing is a booming technique that enables participants to exchange data directly, thus making it possible to answer latency-sensitive service requests and relieve the burden of core networks. With some incentives, providers compete to furnish service requests, thus pledging the quality of experience (QoE) for requestors. However, the decentralized communication in crowdsourcing increases the probability of information tapering. Furthermore, providers' arbitrary selection of the requests poses great threat to the efficient and profitable service provision for the requestors. To deal with these challenges, we propose a blockchain-powered crowdsourcing method, named BPCM, while considering the privacy preservation in mobile environment. Specifically, a mobile crowdsourcing framework based on blockchain is designed first to preserve the privacy of the participants and keep the integrity of the service request and provision. Then, density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) and improved dynamic programming (IDP) are adopted to cluster the requestors and generate service strategies, respectively. Furthermore, simple additive weighting (SAW) and multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) are utilized to select the optimal strategy that achieves the tradeoffs among maximizing the service time, increasing the profits, and reducing the energy consumption for the providers. Finally, comprehensive experiments are conducted to verify the accuracy and effectiveness of BPCM.
Marco Alessi, Alessio Camillò, Enza Giangreco, Marco Matera · 6 authors
Sharing personal data with service providers is a fundamental resource for the times we live in. But data sharing represents an unavoidable issue, due to improper data treatment, lack of users' awareness to whom they are sharing with, wrong or excessive data sharing from end users who ignore they are exposing personal information. The problem becomes even more complicate if we try to consider the devices around us: how to share devices we own, so that we can receive pervasive services, based on our contexts and device functionalities. The European Authority has provided the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in order to implement protection of sensitive data in each EU member, throughout certification mechanisms (according to Art. 42 GDPR). The certification assures compliance to the regulation, which represent a mandatory requirement for any service which may come in contact with sensitive data. Still the certification is an open process and not constrained by strict rule. In this paper we describe our decentralized approach in sharing personal data in the era of smart devices, being those considered sensitive data as well. Having in mind the centrality of users in the ownership of the data, we have proposed a decentralized Personal Data Store prototype, which stands as a unique data sharing endpoint for third party services. Even if blockchain technologies may seem fit to solve the issue of data protection, because of the absence of a central authority, they lay to additional concerns especially relating such technologies with specifications described in the regulation. The current work offers a contribution in the advancements of personal data sharing management systems in a distributed environment by presenting a real prototype and an architectural blueprint, which advances the state of the art in order to meet the GDPR regulation. Address those arisen issues, from a technological perspective, stands as an important challenge, in order to empower end users in owning their personal data for real.
In this work we investigate which aspects of data protection regulation must be carefully observed when implementing Blockchain-based projects in smart cities. This technology provides interesting properties and allows governments to develop flexible and innovative data management systems. Nevertheless, realizing the benefits of using Blockchains requires understanding the government processes along with the legal framework and political setting imposed on government. Though it is a buzzword, Blockchain may not always be the best solution for data processing, and carrying out a Data Protection Impact Assessment could allow an analysis of the necessity and proportionality of the mechanism. Furthermore, principles relating to security of data remain applicable to Blockchains. We discuss points of interaction between Blockchain technology and the European Union data protection framework, and provide recommendations on how to better develop Blockchain-based projects in smart cities. The findings of the study should provide public sector actors with a guideline to assess the real necessity and better format of a Blockchain-based application.
Irene Azogu, Alex Norta, Ingrid Papper, Justin Longo · 5 authors
The role of record keeping and information sharing in the health sector cannot be overemphasized. More recently, there has been renewed interest in finding a solution to the issues pertaining to privacy of health records and how these records can be easily accessed by different healthcare providers in healthcare-service delivery. Thus, such records comprise an individual's health history and other information that facilitates healthcare decisions. Furthermore, easy access to a patient's health information is an important aspect of health-service delivery that must be regulated and monitored because of the sensitivity of the information. Current approaches adopted in many hospitals face challenges of missing files, or records, lack of information sharing between healthcare providers, insecure records and also inaccessibility of patients' health information for healthcare providers that are needed to make informed health decisions. Building from a case study grounded in interviews and document review, we propose a scalable framework that supports the adoption of blockchain technology in addressing the issues of privacy, information sharing, and record keeping in the health sector.
Adrià Rodríguez-Pérez, Pol Valletbó-Montfort, Jordi Cucurull
The transmission and tabulation of results are critical steps in the election process. If election results are provided quickly and transparently, they may inspire trust and confidence in the overall management of the contest. On the contrary, the late and questionable delivery of results might raise concerns and suspicion. In some cases, improper counting and tabulation procedures have brought candidates to question election results and even spurred long periods of violence. In this paper, we explore the potential of blockchain technology to enhance the counting and tabulation procedures during elections. Blockchains are distributed ledgers technologies whose transactions are protected cryptographically. It means that their contents cannot be tampered with nor modified in the long term. We argue that blockchain technology meets the requirements for electronic transmission and consolidation of election results. To prove so, we have implemented a proof of concept with a smart contract running on an Ethereum blockchain that registers the address of several polling stations and records the tally sheets that these submit at the end of the election. We also resort to the smart contract for the automatic and accurate consolidation of the election results once they have been submitted.
As of today, web-based social communication platforms, such as WhatsApp, Twitter, or Facebook, are almost exclusively realized via centralized platforms, based on proprietary interfaces, protocols, and data formats. In consequence, even though social communication being a decentralized, peer-to-peer phenomenon, web-based communication today is implemented via closed, proprietary data silos, which not only lock-in users into their service platforms, but also control and own exchange information and data, including personal and sensitive data such as photos, messages, or contact information. In this paper we present Tawki, a decentralized service architecture for social communication. Using Tawki, users remain in full control of their personal data, which is stored and managed by personal data storages. Each data storage is accessible via a unified Tawki API, which allows users to send and request data to and from other users' personal data storages. Following this approach, social communication is again peer-to-peer without involving a third party controlling and monitoring the process. Tawki uses the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) for both the management of user identities and resolving identifiers to the respective user's personal storage location. Leveraging the immutability of the Ethereum Blockchain, identity management and discovery of personal data storages is secured against censorship and control through any third party.
Security and Privacy are some of the important aspects to be considered in the large-scale deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Due to the large number of IoT devices and the different administrative domains in which they operate, traditional approaches involving a Centralized server for managing Authorizations will not be scalable or efficient. In this paper, we propose a Decentralized Capability-Based Access Control framework using IOTA (DCACI); IOTA is an open-source distributed ledger that enables fee-less micro transactions for the IoT. The DCACI framework enables complete privacy and integrity of the Capability tokens using IOTA's Masked Authenticated Messaging (MAM) technology. It enables device owners and users to Grant, Update, Delegate and Revoke the capability tokens. The proposed DCACI framework has been implemented as a proof-of-concept on a resource constrained machine; the results indicate that it is capable of scaling up to large-scale infrastructure such as a Smart City, having millions of IoT devices.
Anik Islam, Md. Fazlul Kader, Md Mofijul Islam, Soo Young Shin
In order to stay up to date with world issues and cutting-edge technol-ogies, the newspaper plays a crucial role. However, collecting news is not a very easy task. Currently, news publishers are collecting news from their correspond-ents through social networks, email, phone call, fax etc. and sometimes they buy news from the agencies. However, the existing news sharing networks may not provide security for data integrity and any third party may obstruct the regular flow of news sharing. Moreover, the existing news schemes are very vulnerable in case of disclosing the identity. Therefore, a universal platform is needed in the era of globalization where anyone can share and trade news from anywhere in the world securely, without the interference of third-party, and without disclosing the identity of an individual. Recently, blockchain has gained popularity because of its security mechanism over data, identity, etc. Blockchain enables a distrib-uted way of managing transactions where each participant of the network holds the same copy of the transactions. Therefore, with the help of pseudonymity, fault-tolerance, immutability and the distributed structure of blockchain, a scheme (termed as NEWSTRADCOIN) is presented in this paper in which not only news can be shared securely but also anyone can earn money by selling news. The proposed NEWSTRADCOIN can provide a universal platform where publishers can directly obtain news from news-gatherers in a secure way by main-taining data integrity, without experiencing the interference of a third-party, and without disclosing the identity of the news gatherer and publishers.
As we have seen, one of the major advantages of distributed ledger technology that is touted by promoters is the enhanced level of privacy that accompanies the product. In its earliest application as envisaged by Nakamoto, one of the features behind the technology was its use of public key cryptography that would help to conceal the identity of a sender of Bitcoin. 1 Under this regime, only an individual’s public key is available for viewing by third parties who can see that funds have been sent from one party to another on the Blockchain but without any identifying information that would allow a third party to discover the identities of the participants. Moreover, this is seen as a means of safeguarding the personal privacy of users who will have personal details made increasingly available on the Blockchain as the technology increases in prominence.
Modern day entertainment and music streaming has largely been dependent on digital technologies. People prefer subscription based online services to buying physical copies of the music albums. Online streaming services like Spotify, Apple iTunes, Google Music offer great services to the listener with ease. However, drawbacks to these systems includes long delays in payouts for the artists, lack of transparency, confusing payments and licensing terms. In this paper we propose an application that solves all these three drawbacks by making use of Ethereum blockchain and IPFS protocol. The Ethereum blockchain is used for recording transactions and payment management using smart contracts. As storing large files on the Ethereum network costs a lot, the IPFS protocol is used for storing music files, which is a peer to peer protocol. The frontend is built using Web3.js and both listener and artist interact on the blockchain through browser. A PPP(Pay-Per-Play) model with fixed price or as per artist will be defined in the smart contract. The artist can also add other benefactors and share the pay with them. Streaming will be a free service; however, the listeners can tip the artists for supporting. PPP is a smart contract that will be running on the Ethereum blockchain that will be used to set and reward artists with a fixed set of tokens, native currency of platform, per play. Miners will mine new blocks to be added to the blockchain, for which they will be incentivized with tokens. 25 percent of tokens mined per block will go towards a pool for paying artists for streams of their music. The IPFS nodes for storing and distribution of music will be controlled by the artists. Thus, a complete autonomous system for music streaming can be built with least involvement of third parties, and a direct relationship between artist and listener.
As the Internet of Vehicle (IOV) being widely applied throughout our daily life, how to secure data privacy of each vehicle is nowadays a hot topic. Taking an aim of solving this problem, a privacy protection system on double-layered chain basis is designed to eliminate the said security risk during vehicle data communication. At the same time, the nontampering nature of the block chain is used to realize reasonable arbitration in traffic accident disputes, vehicle insurance claims, and other states of affairs. Specifically, an IOV double-layered chain model is constructed to simulate a semicentralized system that is convenient for government to supervise; also, a RSA protocol based on zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) is designed to bring safety and zero-knowledge property to the system; finally, we give the application scenario of this IOV privacy protection system based on double-layered chain that it can be widely used in vehicle-sharing industry. The communication costs, respectively, under double-layered chain and single-layered chain frameworks, are compared to prove that the double-layered structure does save cost. Thus an IOV privacy scheme that is safer and more cost-efficient is given.
Sven Wohlgemuth, Katsuyuki Umezawa, Yusuke Mishina, Kazuo Takaragi
Authentication is essential for sharing information in IoT and its secondary use with AI-capable machines. The aim is to support humans in optimizing risk of supply chains for industrial manufacturing and service provisioning in a timely manner. The ultimate aim is sustainability. The problem for deciding on authentication is probably imperfect information on compliance. Its asymmetric implications of the meaning of contracts for secure information sharing may cause vulnerability of data breach and misuse. A traditional way to avoid harm of that asymmetry requires authentic and consistent sharing of audit information on violation of a certification policy to a centralized audit intelligence. This information sharing is, however, subject to the problem of single point of failure of the centralized audit intelligence. With our work on Security by Design, we show a non-central approach of clarifying accountability to reduce the risk caused by asymmetric implications of the meaning of contracts on authentication. Our signaling and screening scheme SK4SC provides personal digital evidences on compliance to multilateral policies on using information or in other words on trustworthiness. Blockchains are used to realize their symmetric distribution while users share risk on accountability with competition on incentives in a privacy-enhancing manner. Customer relationship management with royalty points, e.g., for eGovernment with taxation, is an example for using SK4SC as digital platform.
This paper highlights certain aspects of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which are incompatible or sometimes counter-productive with certain Blockchain technologies. These topics are discussed based on an example of multiple organisations working together while employing private/permissioned Blockchain technology. The goal of this paper is to show the reader that making Blockchain technology compliant with the GDPR has both benefits and disadvantages.
Trust in a smart city is fundamental to its transparency, the participation of its people in governance, entrepreneurial initiatives, trade, commerce and hence the growth of its economy. A city gets smart by transforming itself to a digital city, and a digital city runs on data, analytics, internet of things, artificial intelligence and machine learning. This inevitable transformation creates the fundamental need for trust. How does data remain sacrosanct and verifiable? How do people trust institutions? How do institutions trust each other? How do devices trust each other? This article explores blockchain as an essential layer of trust in a smart city. It explains the technology by drawing real-life examples to the ‘memory game’ that operates in an ecosystem of ‘trust and consensus.’ The article provides further insight into institutions that can be governed on blockchain through ‘smart contracts’ in a sovereign and human independent manner. The use cases of blockchain have been corroborated with examples of successful blockchain implementation. The value for blockchain, in general, and smart cities, in particular, has been presented across four categories: (a) the network effect on trust on society, governments and industries; (b) empowering the individual and strengthening the economy; (c) the liquid economy and (d) the shareable economy. Given the current topology of technology innovations, there is no solution better than blockchain that embodies trust. It is a hope and expectation that this article will help smart city planners, developers, architects and thinkers implement blockchain as the embodiment of trust in smart cities that are increasingly becoming digital.
Due to emerging disruptive technologies, Internet of Things (IoT) play a vital role for smart living domains, for examples, elderly and disabilities healthcare services and home safety and security monitoring and automation control services. These systems will send automatically an emergency call with home user information and location as a privacy data to public services like hospitals, police offices, or fire departments. This paper introduces emergency service for a Smart Home System (SHS) based on Ethereum blockchain with smart contract for decentralized handling access control among untrusted public services so called Home Service Providers (HSPs) and smart home IoT devices. Our SHS testbed consists of (1) smart home sensor manger equipped with Raspberry Pi (RPi) represented as an edge IoT gateway for gathering environmental sensor data, (2) HSP miners deployed Meteor and Ethereum platform, and (3) web-based applications for home users and HSP staffs. Furthermore, our contribution includes the integration of digital signature for the IoT device authentication, the One Time Passcode with QR code for HSP staff access control, and IPFS for manipulating emergency call from SHS in peers. Our implementation results focusing on HSP miners will be presented and analysed.
René Riedl, Max Neuhofer, Bernhard Stockinger, Florian Grillenberger · 7 authors
Eine Analyse von 1498 Artikeln aus sechs Tageszeitungen zeigt, dass im deutschsprachigen Raum vorwiegend negativ über den Bitcoin berichtet wird. Eine Analyse von 1498 Artikeln aus sechs Tageszeitungen zeigt, dass im deutschsprachigen Raum vorwiegend negativ über den Bitcoin berichtet wird. Zwischen den untersuchten Tageszeitungen bestehen nur geringe Unterschiede. Zwischen den untersuchten Tageszeitungen bestehen nur geringe Unterschiede. Zwischen der Berichterstattung zum Bitcoin und dem Kursverlauf gibt es einen Zusammenhang. Zwischen der Berichterstattung zum Bitcoin und dem Kursverlauf gibt es einen Zusammenhang.