Jano: location-privacy enforcement in mobile and pervasive environments through declarative policies

Abstract

Today there are many location technologies providing people or object location. However, location privacy must be ensured before providing widely disseminated location services. Privacy rules may depend not only on the identity of the requester, but also on past events such as the places visited by the person being located, or previous location queries. Therefore, location systems must support the specification and enforcement of security policies (including history-based) allowing users to specify when, how and whom may know their location. We propose a middleware platform named Jano [Jano (or JANVS in latin) is the god of doors and gates in the roman mythology. He is usually depicted with two or four faces turning in opposite directions.] supporting both pull and push location requests while enforcing configurable security policies. Policies are specified using the Security Policy Language, SPL, facilitating the use of well-known security models. In particular, Jano supports history-based policies applied to person's or object's location. Jano implementation integrates several location technologies (e.g. GPS, RFID, etc.) and deals with the related heterogeneity aspects. It provides a webbased interface that facilitates policy specification, and its