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Information technologies are becoming pervasive and powerful to the point
that the privacy of citizens is now at risk. Indeed, more and more of our daily
transactions are conducted electronically and require us to transmit personal
information. Examples include using an electronic identity card to prove one’s
age in a bar, buying digital content on the Internet, checking our healthcare
records on-line, or planning our next vacation. In this new information society,
individuals need to be able to keep their autonomy and to retain control over
their personal information, irrespective of their activities. The widening gap
between this vision and current practices on electronic information networks
undermines individuals’ trust and threatens critical domains like mobility,
healthcare, and the exercise of democracy.
This book documents the R&D outcome of the PRIME Project, an R&D project partially funded by the European Union’s Sixth Framework Programme and the Swiss Federal Office for Education and Science. PRIME has focused on privacy-enhancing identity management techniques and systems to support users’ sovereignty over their personal privacy and enterprises’ privacy-compliant data processing. During the course of four years, the project has involved over a hundred researchers and professionals from 22 major European academic and industrial organizations conducting R&D work in areas relevant to digital privacy. The book presents 28 detailed chapters organized in five parts: Introductory summary, legal, social, and economic aspects, realization of privacy-enhancing user-centric identity management, exploitation of PRIME results for applications, conclusions drawn and an outlook on future work. As the first coherent presentation of the topic, this book will serve as a valuable source of reference and inspiration for anybody working on digital privacy. |
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