Enhancing privacy in Multi-agent Systems

Abstract

Privacy is of crucial importance in the era of global connectivity in which everything is interconnected anytime and everywhere, with almost 2 billion worldwide users with connection to the Internet. Indeed, most of these users are concerned about their privacy. These concerns also apply for the new emerging research fields in computer science such as Multi-agent Systems. A Multi-agent System consists of a number of agents (which can be intelligent and/or autonomous) that interact with one-another. An agent usually encapsulates personal information describing its principal (names, preferences, tastes, credit card numbers, etc.). Moreover, agents carry out interac-XIII agentes. Además, proporcionamos una infraestructura de agentes segura, para que una vez que un agente decide revelar un atributo a otro, sólo esteúltimo sea capaz de tener acceso a ese atributo, evitando que terceras partes puedan acceder a dicho atributo. Para evitar el procesado de información personal proponemos un modelo de gestión de las identidades de los agentes. Este modelo permite a los agentes la utilización de diferentes identidades para reducir el riesgo del procesado de información. Además, también describimos en esta tesis la implementación de dicho modelo en una plataforma de agentes. XIV Contents Contents XV List of Figures XIX List of Tables XXI In the second part of the twentieth century, Alan Westin defined privacy as "the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated" (Westin, 1967). This is what is currently known as the informational self-determination right (Rannenberg et al., 2009). The concept of informational self-determination changed the right to privacy from the right to be let alone to its current incarnation as a means to limit the abuse of personal data (Schermer, 2007). Informational self-determination represents today's European understanding and regulation of privacy in the context of information and communication technology (EU Directives 95/46/EC, 45/2001/EC, and 2002/58/EC). Despite all these regulations, as the Internet has no governing or regulating body, privacy breaches are still possible. Nowadays, in the era of global connectivity (every-1.5. Structure of the Document This document is organized as detailed bellow: Chapter 2 presents our first contribution in this thesis: the state of the art of studies in the field that falls into the intersection between privacy and Multiagent Systems. Chapter 3 presents our second contribution in this thesis: a secure agent platform. Chapter 4 presents our third contribution in this thesis: a privacy-enhancing agent identity management model. Chapter 5 presents our fourth contribution in this thesis: a privacy-enhancing agent platform that implements our agent identity management model. Chapter 6 presents our fifth and last contribution in this thesis: a self-disclosure decision making model. Chapter 7 presents some concluding remarks, the author's related scientific publicat...