A Semantic Framework For Privacy-Aware Access Control

The issue of privacy is constantly brought to the spotlight since an ever increasing number of services collects and processes personal information from users. In fact, recent advances in mobile communications, location and sensing technologies and data processing are boosting the deployment of context-aware personalized services and the creation of smart environments but, at the same time, they pose a serious risk on individuals' privacy rights. Being situated in the realms of legal and social studies, the notion of privacy is mainly left, concerning its protection, to legislation and service providers' self-regulation by means of privacy policies. However, all laws and codes of conduct are useless without enforcement. Based on this concept, this paper presents a framework conceived on the basis of privacy legislation. It uses a semantic model for the specification of privacy-aware data access rules and a middleware system which mediates between the service providers and the data sources and caters for the enforcement of the regulatory provisions.