Proxies for Privacy in Ambient Systems

Abstract

The increased use of social-network services for sharing personal information has made it easier to gain awareness of each other. It has also increased the interest in privacy issues, especially since it is not always clear to the provider of information who gains access to personal data and to what end this data is being used. Many interesting ideas and proposals have appeared to address the issue of privacy vs. information sharing. One of the most interesting is perhaps the notion of minimising asymmetry of information flow. It is not obvious how this idea can be applied in the area of ambient assisted living since raising awareness of the situation of the information provider is a core feature for reaching the goal of enabling elderly and disabled people to stay in their own housing. The work described here argues how the asymmetry of information flow can be minimised without compromising on the quality of monitoring and with the added benefit of giving next-of-kin better access to expert evaluation of the situation of their family members. This paper also reports on some initiatives on location-aware systems and ambient assisted living and shows how the combined experiences gained from these projects have led to the development of the proposed model for minimising asymmetry by proxies in an ambient assisted living environment.