Enabling Privacy in Pervasive Computing Using Fusion of Privacy Negotiation, Identity Management and Trust Management Techniques

Designing and composing pervasive systems of the next generation networks is a technological as well as social challenge due to its complexity and its unpredictable nature. In such environments a significant amount of information directly related to users are fetched, exchanged, processed and delivered as personalized services. Due to automation of infrastructure both users and services have many agents acting on their behalf. Respectively in pervasive systems one of the most problematic concerns arises on user right to maintain privacy. This paper is focused on instruments to enable and maintain privacy through a subtle fusion of different privacy enabling techniques. We present conceptual privacy enabling architecture of infrastructural pervasive middleware that uses trust management, privacy negotiation and identity management during the inter-entity communication lifecycle. Using this approach balance between the conflicting interest of pervasiveness on one hand and protecting privacy on the other is achieved.