Access controls for privacy protection in pervasive environments

Pervasive Environments (PE) collect and process a massive amount of person-related and sensitive information. Data collected by a single sensor is in most cases not adequate to provide premium services. Information gathered must rather be combined to offer real benefits. The fused data must be secured by access controls to ensure privacy of the users and their trust in PE with it. This work proposes an Object-oriented World Model (OOWM) as a central information source that is filled with information collected from intelligent sensors and can be accessed and manipulated by smart application devices. It is shown how privacy can be enforced in such a centralized component. Privacy requirements must be specified and enforced. Especially conflicts in different requirements, e. g., user- and operator-specific polices, is an open issue. Existing approaches for specification and enforcement of access controls are discussed. An XACML-based approach for privacy in PE is shown and analgorithm for combining privacy policies is presented.