Identity REvolution multi disciplinary perspectives

Identity REvolution
Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives

Identity REvolution
Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives
Edited by David-Olivier Jaquet-Chiffelle
Designed by Giampaolo Possagno
Art directed by Claudia Nuara
Photography: © Giampaolo Possagno / www.arteplus.ch
Except page 18: © David Woods / Fotolia
page 27: © olly / Fotolia
page 37: © David-Olivier Jaquet-Chiffelle
Li-lian: Fareeda Anklin
David: Frédéric Mast
Zoe: Loïc Anklin
Thanks to Sandrine Viatte and Paul Vincent for their hospitality.
Print: Stämpfli Publikationen AG, CH-3001 Bern
Copyright © May 2009 by the FIDIS consortium - EC Contract 507512
All rights reserved.
www.fidis.net | booklet@fidis.net
ISBN 978-2-8399-0515-2

2
identity [r]evolution is happening. Who are
you, who am I in the information society ?
In recent years, the convergence of several
factors – technological, political, economic –
has accelerated a fundamental change in our net-worked
world. On a technological level, information
becomes easier to gather, to store, to exchange
and to process. The belief that more information
brings more security has been a strong political
driver to promote information gathering since Sep-tember
11. Profiling intends to transform informa-tion
into knowledge in order to anticipate one’s be-haviour,
or needs, or preferences. It can lead to
categorizations according to some specific risk cri-teria,
for example, or to direct and personalized
marketing. As a consequence, new forms of identi-ties
appear. They are not necessarily related to our
names anymore. They are based on information,
on traces that we leave when we act or interact,
when we go somewhere or just stay in one place,
or even sometimes when we make a choice. They
are related to the SIM cards of our mobile phones,
to our credit card numbers, to the pseudonyms
that we use on the Internet, to our email addresses,
to the IP addresses of our computers, to our pro-files…
Like traditional identities, these new forms of
identities can allow us to distinguish an individual
within a group of people, or describe this person as
belonging to a community or a category.
How far have we moved through this process ? The
identity [r]evolution is already becoming part of our
daily lives. People are eager to share information
with their “friends” in social networks like Face-book,
in chat rooms, or in Second Life. Customers
take advantage of the numerous bonus cards that
are made available. Video surveillance is becoming
the rule. In several countries, traditional ID docu-ments
are being replaced by biometric passports
with RFID technologies. This raises several privacy
issues and might actually even result in changing
the perception of the concept of privacy itself, in
particular by the younger generation. In the infor-mation
society, our (partial) identities become the
illusory masks that we choose – or that we are as-signed
– to interplay and communicate with each
other. Rights, obligations, responsibilities, even
reputation are increasingly associated with these
masks. On the one hand, these masks become the
key to access restricted information and to use
services. On the other hand, in case of a fraud or
negative reputation, the owner of such a mask can
E D I T O R I A L
The

3
be penalized : doors remain closed, access to
services
is denied. Hence the current preoccupying
growth of impersonation, identity-theft and
other
identity-related crimes.
Where is the path of the identity [r]evolution leading
us ? The first part of this booklet presents several
possible futuristic scenarios, some of them in the
near future, within the next 20 years, others in the
long-term, e.g., to explore the areas of human en-hancement
and robotics. They have been originally
described in FIDIS deliverable D12.5 : Use cases
and scenarios of emerging technologies, edited by
Mark Gasson from the University of Reading, UK.
These scenarios have been written by several
members of the FIDIS consortium, of different
backgrounds and specialities, in order to cover a
wide range of possible issues. Even though these
scenarios cannot encompass the entire work car-ried
out within FIDIS, they illustrate in a lively man-ner
how emerging technologies might impact our
daily lives and our vision of identity in the future.
These ten scenarios are short and each of them
focuses on one particular subject : the potential im-pact
of ambient intelligence environments for the
first two scenarios, biometrics, social networks, vir-tual
identities, grid computing and forensics for the
next six scenarios, and the co-existence of human
beings, cyborgs and non-human intelligent actors
(robots) in a future world for the last two. These sce-narios
illustrate several perspectives related to
emerging technologies and should stimulate the re-flection
on their potential use, misuse or abuse, on
related security, privacy and ethical issues, as well
as on their social and legal implications. The narra-tive
form makes some of the theoretical FIDIS
results
easier to grasp for a non-specialist. We
hope that these scenarios will reach a wide com-munity
of people and provide a valuable insight into
what has been done within the FIDIS European Net-work
of Excellence. The interested reader is en-couraged
to deepen his knowledge of the work of
FIDIS, either through the FIDIS Summit book or by
selecting specific FIDIS deliverables.
The second part of this booklet is meant as a
teaser to discover the FIDIS Summit book “The
Future of Identity in the Information Society – Op-portunities
and Challenges”, a complete docu-ment
published by Springer that offers a synthesis
of the main achievements of FIDIS. The editors are
the FIDIS coordinators Kai Rannenberg, Denis
Royer and André Deuker from Goethe University
Frankfurt in Germany. Each chapter summarizes
an important topic covered by the FIDIS EU-project
and has been edited by members of the
FIDIS consortium directly involved in the research
related to this topic.
What is the future of identity ? Where is the path of
the identity [r]evolution leading us ? Is it the premise
of an ambient intelligent space ? Does it foreshadow
the advent of a Big Brother (or Soft Sister) society ?
It is not the aim of this booklet to propose a
definitive answer. It is rather an opportunity to provide
a wide community of citizens, decision-makers,
ethics specialists, etc. with a glimpse into
some possible challenging futures, in order to bring
out questions and stimulate discussions that
hopefully will lead the European citizen to form his
own opinion and take informed decisions.
Last but not least, I would like to thank the con-tributors
for the quality of their work, as well as all
the persons who have made this printed version
possible. A special thanks goes to Giampaolo
Possagno for the design and the graphical reali-zation.
I wish you all enjoyable and fruitful reading !
David-Olivier Jaquet-Chiffelle
Editor
VIP – Virtual Identity and Privacy Research Centre, Bern University of Applied Sciences and
University of Lausanne, Switzerland

4
Setting the Scene
While developing the scenarios, it has been deliberately intended that the basic characters should remain consistent, i.e. the same characters
are used where possible, although the situations vary depending on the scenario. Some ‘character development’ may, however, be needed, and
in these cases extra background information will be given at the beginning of the scenario.
Introducing the main two Characters
David Cragg is a 39-year-old humanities teacher and housemaster at a British public school in Royston Vasey, in the north of England. He first
met his now wife Li-lian (née Cheung) while holidaying in mainland Greece. Li-lian’s family is originally from Hong Kong, but she is second
generation in the UK. Li-lian works as a security director of a big hotel chain and frequently visits companies producing security devices.
Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is a development of Information Communication
Technology which seamlessly integrates intelligent devices into the
environment. If the current visions of Ambient Intelligence come true, then
we will move to an age where we equip our entire environment with the
ability to ‘think’ on its own and to make ‘smart’ decisions for us. The aim of
the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) environment is to provide a context-aware
system, using unobtrusive computing devices, which will improve the quality
of people’s lives by acknowledging their needs, requirements and
preferences and thus acting in some way on their behalf.
The concept of AmI obviously refers to something that is more than just
science fiction, but it is still unclear to what extent it indicates an already
unfolding reality. Although it is impossible to predict if and in particular how
this evolution towards AmI will take place, we can see many emerging
technologies, supported by standardisation, social acceptance and legal
frameworks, which could facilitate AmI. The decrease in cost of these
emerging technologies as well as the emergence of customers that are
willing to pay for the services that can be provided seems to increase the
likelihood that at least some kind of AmI practices will surface. Besides these
supporting and enabling technologies, techniques of user modelling and
profiling are already widely-spread, providing customers with enhanced,
personalised and customised services (e.g. Amazon’s customised suggested
purchases or customisation of financial offers such as insurance quotes).
Equally, there seems to be a smooth connection between targeted
advertising, location-based services and ambient intelligence.
Ambient Intelligence – putting
the machines in control
Mark Gasson (University of Reading, UK)

5
Having planned their wedding some 12 months earlier, the Craggs are on
honeymoon
for two weeks in Crete. This, due to circumstance, coincides with
the imminent delivery of their first child whose announcement came as a
‘
happy surprise’ some months earlier.
It’s all Greek to me
Their late arrival at ‘Hotel Warwikakis’ in the city periphery the night before
had, on the whole, been uneventful. David had previously opted not to allow
his intelligent home to send a public version of his family preferences agent to
their hotel in advance, and instead accepted that, because of this, they ‘may
not be able to provide for all specific needs on the first night’. However he
hadn’t figured on the Greeks being a little slow on the uptake of new technology,
and so despite trying to use his MyComm personal communication
device to upload the data at the reception desk, he found he was unable to
because their system did not use the latest international standard.
Despite this, after converting the profile agent to an older format and answering
a few questions related to the types of personal data the hotel was allowed to
read from their agent and for how long they wished their preferences to be
stored by the hotel, they enjoyed a room lit and heated to their approximate
preferred comfort levels, classical music piped through the suite’s music
system, and the television channels ordered to reflect their tastes.
After a good night’s sleep, the day had started abruptly at 06:45 by a wake-up
alarm call. Unfortunately neither David nor Li-lian wished to get up at that time,
but during the conversion to the older format, the MyComm had been switched
out of holiday mode, and as such had assumed today was like any other
typical working day. This was rapidly rectified.
Some time later, after getting out of bed, Li-lian decides that she is too
exhausted to venture outside that morning, so she opts to stay at the hotel
while David does some sightseeing. As part of Li-lian’s travel-insurance policy,
she is wearing a MediCheck health-monitoring system which monitors her
continually for anomalous physiological changes. David ensures that his

6
MyComm device is listed to receive alerts, and authorises the device to
contact the hotel reception in the event of an emergency. As is default with
such devices, in line with Greek law, the local emergency service is authorised
automatically to be contacted.
Meeting the local location services
David was never one for shopping, but when away always has a look around
the local shops. Like many cities, the centre is littered with international cloth-ing
stores, most of which use RFID tag scanners in the doorway so as to scan
for tags in clothing and accessories to work out what the customer wears and
thus to create a rough profile of them. Additionally, most shops welcome the
ad hoc automatic upload of shopping agents from personal communicators
so as to create a list of offers and discounts to help tempt the customer. By
default, David has such options disabled on his MyComm device, and having
felt a sense of personal invasion when, for example, the shop is able to alert
him to discounts on his type of underpants based on the RFID tag data, he
opted to subscribe to an online tag-swap site which periodically sends him
credit-card sized plastic tokens stuffed full of random RFID tags designed to
confuse the shop’s profiling agents. His favourite one apparently registers him
as wearing a sombrero and carrying eight kilos of jam.
After a bit on an amble around the local area, David wants to find some food.
Having heard of the local dolmathes, he is interested in trying them, but he
also has some dietary requirements that he needs to be wary of. David’s
MyComm device is a 5th-generation mobile device with many useful functions
and access to location-based services. One of his favourites is the locator
service which enables the device to pin-point his location and seeks out
places of interest to him – in this case restaurants. David’s device is also
equipped with MInD, a mobile device identity manager which allows him to
specify a range of partial identities which he can use when accessing such
online services. David enables the service and selects restaurant finder. Then
he selects his ‘personal food finder’ profile which stores details of his dietary
requirements and then selects ‘local food’ and ‘time sync’, which tells the
service to look for items relevant for the current time. After a few moments, the
MyComm indicates that the service is requesting further details – in this case
his location. David authorises the transfer and a list of appropriate places
appears on the screen. David is also notified by his device that he can update
his iConcert database via the same service provider using the information he
has already sent. iConcert is a plug-in for his MyComm that monitors his
music library and generates a personalised list of upcoming concerts in his
local area. The filtering of relevant events happens on his local device, so that
no further information is needed by the service provider. He chooses not to
bother, so he remains unaware that his favourite sitar player, Ravi Shankar, is
performing with the Cretan lute-player Ciborgakis in the city just that night.
While en route, David’s MyComm informs him that he is carrying insufficient
cash funds to get him through the day after a typical breakfast at the restaurant.
David is aware of the link between uses on his eComm card and subsequent
targeted mailings from his card company’s ‘trusted group of associates’ (a
downside of the agreement that assures him a marginally decreased interest
rate), and his profiling agent knows that he usually opts to use cash for smaller
one-off purchases. As such, a detour to a cash-machine is offered and
accepted, after David has authorised his MyComm to give his name and
nationality to the local ATM finder service. Cash-machines still use PIN
security, but this is augmented with additional biometric protection. However,
rather than using non-revocable biometrics such as fingerprints, the cash
machines use a type of keystroke analysis to obtain a characteristic typing
pattern from the PIN button presses. This type of changeable biometric has
become widely accepted as preferable. David is annoyed when he has to type
in a sample line of numbers four times over and is still rejected by the machine.
He now has to use the fall-back option of authorising the ATM to make a
picture of him and compare this to the facial-biometric template stored by his
UK bank. Even though he knows the picture will be stored for five years by the
hefty Greek anti-identity-fraud laws, he has no choice but to accept.

7
I don’t drink coffee, I take tea my dear
Because it’s a holiday, David doesn’t bother with trying to find out the Greek
menu by himself. He uploads his profile to the restaurant system and clicks his
agreement with the system’s data-processing practices. He is guided to his
preferred seat position in the window and is able to select his meal from a
heavily customised menu. He enjoys the luxury of just seeing his favourite
foods fulfilling his dietary requirements offered to him on the menu, even
though he knows the restaurant will sell his data to many food-broking services.
The restaurant is augmented with sensor technologies and in the
absence of any other information, makes sweeping generalisations in order to
project targeted advertising on the menu card when not in use. David is not
best pleased to find an advert for a local sports club appear as a result of the
doorway height sensor and stool strain sensor concluding he is too heavy for
his height. This is soon updated when he removes his rucksack and his weight
is recalculated. Unfortunately, being a result of a combined group profile of the
current restaurant patrons, changing the music of ‘Sakis Rouvas’ which is
piped through the building is not so easy to correct.
After a delicious assortment of mezes, and the best part of a drink, the waitress,
alerted as to the volume of drink remaining by the cup coaster, comes over with a
filter coffee pot to offer a complimentary top-up. Unfortunately even the advances
in Ambient Intelligence haven’t eliminated human error, and David explains just too
late how he had actually gone out of his way to find Lapsang Souchong tea…
While preparing to leave, a message comes through the MyComm from
David’s
intellifridge back at home. It requests his acceptance for a menu for
that evening’s meal based on items that are nearing expiry in storage. Usually,
the fridge would negotiate such a message with the house gateway, and thus
discovered that the house had gone into holiday mode. However, David had
previously configured a link with it in order to interrogate it directly, so mes-sages
were unfiltered. He starts to remotely configure the preferences to route
it back through the house and avoid further messages when a priority mes-sage
appears – Li-lian’s MediCheck device has found cause for concern.

8
Congratulations, it’s a…
Despite having had several false alarms in the past, this time Li-lian was in
complete agreement with the MediCheck device – something was definitely
happening ! Having automatically alerted the concierge’s desk and contacted
the local emergency services, help was quickly to hand, and within 30 minutes,
Li-lian was being wheeled through the doors of a maternity unit. Having been
largely planned in advance by her insurance company, her arrival was not
totally unexpected. Indeed, her doctor had already authorised access to
relevant portions of her e-medical file to the hospital.
However, in her haste in leaving the hotel, Li-lian had only taken her Chinese ID
card with her. Unfortunately, this has led to some confusion over her identity
because her Chinese name differs from her English name, and to further con-found
matters, her recent change of surname has already been updated on her
e-medical records. Fortunately, Li-lian is still alert enough to give her consent
to the hospital cross-referencing her iris scan with that stored in the medical
files, and her identity is confirmed. She realises that she had better change her
e-
medical preferences to allow such identification without her consent, seeing
the kind of emergencies that can arise, particularly when travelling.
Meanwhile…
David returns to the hotel too late to see Li-lian, but, having taken the oppor-tunity
to collect some of her belongings for her stay in hospital, he heads to
the hospital in their rental car. Not being familiar with the local area, he in-structs
the on-board GPS unit to guide him to the city hospital, and for once,
he doesn’t mind at all that his personal data and profiles are being transferred
to the local rental-car company in exchange for the routing service. Being
slightly flustered and concerned for his wife, David becomes increasingly an-noyed
with the enforced limits on the car, and so he disables the overrides by
putting the car in ‘emergency mode’. Unfortunately, the traffic monitoring
cameras observe his erratic driving, trace the car back to the rental company,
and automatically issue a fine to David. As a result, David also has an addi-tional
sum levied onto the car insurance policy by the rental company. On ar-rival
to the hospital, David makes his way inside, and looks for directions to
maternity. Because most of the signage is in Greek, he uses the camera on
his MyComm device to translate the words to find his way. He curses when his
MyComm only yields error messages and he has to spend precious minutes
to use sign language with a passing nurse to indicate where he wants to go.
Sometimes, he feels there are distinct advantages to living in the US, where
buildings automatically infer and smoothly indicate people’s desired routes.
The European AmI Directive, however, has prohibited such automated guid-ance
without explicit individual consent. Who cares about explicit informed
consent when your wife is in labour ?!
The maternity unit is augmented with additional security measures to prevent
unauthorised personnel from entering. To request access, David is asked to
scan his iris, and not being on the list of personnel is told to wait for further
instruction. Security at the hospital is tight, and the security department is
able to cross-check iris scan patterns with the European centralised biometric
database. Despite having been acquitted of an alleged offence with a minor at
a previous place of work, David’s details are still to be found in the database,
and as such he is taken aside for further questioning as to his purpose at the
hospital.
After some four hours in labour, Li-lian gives birth to a healthy baby girl. As has
become standard, the baby is implanted in the umbilical stump with an RFID
tag to allow identification in the hospital. Although such temporary implants
have become normal practise, permanent implantation is left for the parents
to decide at a later date. David and Li-lian have already decided to have the
umbilical tag removed, even though they realise that younger generations
seem rather fond of these identifying implants. Zoe – as the girl is named – will
just have to decide for herself when she comes of age whether or not she
wants to be permanently chipped.

10
Softwars
David is at home recovering from stress while Li-lian is in Egypt for business.
The school where David is teaching has recently started implementing the vir-tual
learning environment (VLE) : a personalised interactive learning coach
which measures the progress of students in relation to targets that have been
set. Since its implementation the system has not run well and has caused the
teachers serious stress. This, combined with the fear of becoming redundant
because of this implementation, it has caused David to have a severe burn-out.
David only went to see his G.P. once. After his doctor diagnosed that David
was suffering from a burn-out, he told him that the rest of the recovery trajec-tory
could be done conveniently at home with the help of a Medicheck device.
David’s health insurance company will refund most of his costs on the condi-tion
that he permanently wears the Medicheck which can be rented at the
local health centre. The Medicheck consists of a tight t-shirt with sensors
monitoring heart rate, muscle tension, bodily posture, etc. A virtual doctor is
activated when the measured signals reach certain values.
As he has the feeling that nobody really listens to his issues and because he
would like to create some order in the chaotic feelings and thoughts he is ex-periencing
he also decides to buy the Psychicheck – a mental wellbeing mon-itoring
system, which according to the ads provides a permanent listening ear
and personalised advice. The device registers the frequency in which certain
words are uttered in combination with other words. It also measures the pitch
of voice, sentence length and facial expression. It is able to take the registered
domestic preferences profiled by his intelligent home into account : “It would
be good to stick to your normal daily routine and get up at 07:45” is the thera-peutic
advice based on the profiled user. One of the pleasant aspects about
the Psychicheck is that it is designed as a user-friendly little robot dog called
“Fifi”. The social interface of this device makes it nice to interact with.
One night David cannot fall asleep due to a strong headache. He feels sad
partly because of missing Li-lian. Fifi picks up on David’s mood and inquires
as to what is wrong. After sharing his feelings, Fifi, based on David’s leisure
Ambient Intelligence – softwars
Katja de Vries & Niels van Dijk (VUB, Belgium)

11
profile from his intelligent home, suggests that they watch a movie together.
During a bloody climax in the movie in which the main character is about to be
violently attacked, David’s Medicheck suddenly switches on. It reports
exceeded heart rate and advises David to abort his stress causing activity.
David wants to see how the movie ends and consults his Psychicheck which
advises him to continue watching. David decides to ignore his Medicheck
although his arm starts to cramp a little…
A romantic confusion of identity
Li-lian is in Egypt for a business trip. She feels quite uncomfortable about leaving
David at home since he is experiencing such a difficult time. Now that they are
separated by a huge distance, she is very pleased that they both have implanted
in their hands an active electrode which wirelessly connects them. She is at the
airport waiting for her flight when she remembers how she and David decided
to do this on Valentine’s Day. The active electrodes (both connected to wireless
internet) were implanted into one of the nerves of their left hand. If one of them
moves their fingers (creating a certain pattern of motor neural signal pulses) in
a specific way (their “secret” gesture) the other one will perceive this – even if
they are separated by a huge distance. The couple experience this as being very
romantic : one can “feel” each other even when separated in space. However
she has noticed on several occasions that the incoming signals confuse the
monitoring system of her Medicheck (her travel insurance requires her to wear
one during her stay in Egypt). Every time the muscle contractions were registered
by the Medicheck as an unusual signal. She had to manually specify that the
signals were coming from a trusted “outside source”.
Pre-paid RoadMiles cards & interoperability
Li-lian is driving in a rented car from Cairo to Alexandria where she has a busi-ness
appointment. Before leaving Cairo the owner of the shop where Li-lian
rented the car tried to explain to her something about the “mile-tax” card she
had to insert into the ignition slot, but his English was so broken that she had
difficulty understanding him. However, she assumed that the mile-tax system
was more or less comparable to the system in the UK. Car owners in the UK
use “RoadMiles” cards which are linked to their account – and once a month
an automatic payment of the due tax is made. When you rent a car in the UK
you pay the amount of tax due to the car rental after returning the car. What
Li-lian did not know is that in Egypt you buy pre-paid “RoadMiles” cards at the
petrol station in order to drive. This system is used due to the lack of facilitating
the required technological infrastructure and is also more privacy enhancing
(you can buy your pre-paid card anonymously).
Somewhere in the middle of nowhere Li-lian’s car suddenly slows down and
stops. Li-lian wonders what the reason might be. Has the car noticed that her
eyes became more and more tired ? Impossible, the technology of this car is
not smart enough to detect such complex facial features ! When a car passes
she waves for help. An Egyptian driver stops, smiles and tells her in a mix of
Arabic and hardly comprehensible English that she needs to have a new pre-paid
card. “Where should I get one ?” she asks. The Egyptian car driver
shrugs, smiles, and drives away again. There she is, on her own in the middle
of the desert. She begins to panic. Hours later she gets to Alexandria – she
had to leave her car in the desert and was given a lift in a carpet truck to her
destination. Of course she is still stressed by the course of events, but fortu-nately
the business people she had to meet are still in town and the business
meeting can still take place.
During the meeting her hand with the wireless electrode begins hurt – this is
certainly not David’s secret gesture ! Li-lian thinks that it has something to do
with the slight stress she has experienced. She takes a deep breath and her
hand muscles relax. However, this is really not the time to think about those
things – in the middle of her meeting. Li-lian’s Medicheck device starts to
beep. On the screen it says : “physiological anomaly”. Li-lian is irritated by this
intervention. She is fine, why is this device bothering her ?! So she selects the
“no problem : natural cause for stress” option. When the alert goes off again
she ignores the alert - she has to do business now !

13
Fifteen minutes later however an ambulance arrives at the business centre
and its staff barges into the conference room. They slightly hesitate when
looking at Li-lian who is identified as the source of the distress signal. They are
surprised that she looks perfectly fine. The audience slowly turns silent. The
medical team turn to Li-lian, who has now stopped her lecture, and ask if she
is doing well and could go to the ambulance to do a medical check. Li-lian
follows them, confused by the whole scene…
Intermezzo : A revealing phone call
While Li-lian is sitting in a cab heading for the airport David appears on her
MyComm device. He looks very concerned because he has been notified
about the Medicheck incident. David tells her that apparently the alarming
signal that was received by the hospital in Egypt from Li-lian’s Medicheck
device was caused by an unlucky coincidence. When David was watching the
movie his stress level and muscular tension rose strongly and affected the
implanted electrode in his hand. Normally these signals would have been
immediately transmitted to Li-lian, but her stay in the desert with no wireless
connection made direct transmission impossible. Shortly after her arrival in
the connection node of Alexandria all the delayed signals where received
simultaneously. This caused a peak signal picked up by the Medicheck which
was unable to find a contextual reason for it. David also says that the travel
insurance company is not willing to pay for the cost of the ambulance since
these are caused by the interference of the implant – and as such not covered
by the insurance policy.

14
Citizenchip
Li-lian arrives at the airport of Cairo and proceeds to the check-in. Since the
European Commission has negotiated a border control system at the entrance
gates to Europe, a chip detection system has been installed. People are im-mediately
categorised according to the kind of chip implanted into them : Eu-ropean
citizenchip, US citizenchip, chips provided to selected immigrants who
are still in an immigration or asylum procedure. A few months ago Li-lian read
a news bulletin on her MyComm that there were massive demonstrations in
the North African countries against the implementation of this system and the
creation of a “chipless” caste.
When Li-lian passes the scanning zone, red lights suddenly start to flash. Li-lian
is asked to accompany the security staff for further examination. It turns
out that the scanning system is unable to categorise her unambiguously due
to her double citizenchip (both European/British and Chinese). According to
Egyptian law only single citizenchip is allowed and thus the system is incapable
of processing double citizenchip. Solving the confusion takes quite a while
and Li-lian almost misses her flight…
E-waste
When Li-lian finally arrives home, David is so happy to see her again. They tell
each other their stories and find out how many small coincidences have led to
the strange sequence of events. Tired and angry about the bad advice of the
Psychicheck they decide to throw it out with the garbage. However, did they
realise that the robot contained all kinds of sensitive and personal information
which is now literally “on the street” ?

16
Biometrics refers to the automatic recognition of individuals based on their
physiological and/or behavioural characteristics. Physiological characteristics
such as fingerprints have been used for identification purposes since the
19th century. Also the signature as an example of behavioural characteristics
has been used for authentication purposes for centuries. With technological
advancement, new characteristics such as a person’s keystroke pattern or
the possibility of a DNA analysis have evolved. Citizens worldwide are
growing accustomed to the collection of two biometric characteristics, i.e.
fingerprints and biometric picture, as these are implemented in machine
readable travel documents (MRTD) issued according to ICAO standards.
Private companies have been developing new services concerning
biometrics too. For more than 3,000 diseases, among them breast cancer,
Alzheimer’s disease, mucoviscidosis, and Huntington’s chorea, genetic
reasons are known and companies offer genetic tests to detect genetic
loading with regards to such diseases. With such information available,
genetic profiling would be possible, for example by insurance companies
which impose the contractual duty for their customers to report previous
diseases, known dispositions and other circumstances allowing conclusions
regarding future illnesses. In the future we may see a development where
individuals may benefit from lower insurance rates, or on the contrary may
not find a company willing to offer them insurance coverage based on their
genetic predisposition.
As a new service, companies have also started to offer genealogical
research based on DNA tests. The aim is to determine the geographical
origin of customers and to find other descendants of joint ancestors. These
new emerging social or rather genetic networks revolve around the common
interest of shared ancestry. While in these cases the use of DNA as
identifying information cannot be changed by the user, social networks
usually offer the possibility to create a partial identity : a profile describing
the user, her interests and often her social contacts.
Use and Abuse of
Biometric Data and Social Networks
Harald Zwingelberg & Maren Raguse (ICPP, Germany)

17
Zoe, the daughter of Li-lian and David, is now two and a half years old, and
enrolled in kindergarten, and so Li-lian has returned to work.
Getting ready for work
Li-lian and David are getting ready to leave for work and are dropping Zoe at
the kindergarten. Li-lian got home late the evening before, returning from one
of her regular business trips. She still feels upset by something her good friend
Joanne told her over the phone while she was waiting for her departure at
Cairo airport. Li-lian closed an inexpensive supplementary health insurance
contract a couple of months ago which among other additional treatments of-fers
better protection during her trips abroad. She had told her friend Joanne
of the policy because Joanne works as a flight attendant and hence travels a
lot. Joanne had told her that the day before she had received an offer 35 per-cent
more expensive than Li-lian’s insurance rate. This offer came as a sur-prise
because Joanne is only three months younger than Li-lian, she has one
child slightly older than Zoe and no prior severe illnesses.
Joanne’s research on the internet revealed that the reason for the offer may
have been an exploit of biometric raw-data. The application procedure for the
insurance required a standard digital picture to be taken as well as a finger-print.
She was told that the picture would be printed on the insurance card and
that the fingerprint would be used as a key for personal data stored on the
card. Joanne found out that biometric raw data can be used to identify health
risks. A photo reveals data such as sex, age and ethnic origin but apparently
can also contain hints to health conditions such as stroke (asymmetry of the
face), liver diseases (yellowish skin) or Marfan syndrome (special symmetry of
the face). The fingerprint may reveal information on the nutrition status of the
mother during pregnancy or the risk of certain types of stomach problems. In
Joanne’s case it may have been a slightly yellowish taint as she had been on
a special diet during the time the picture was taken. She was led to this con-clusion
by the fact that the company offered the same insurance rate Li-lian
was offered, if any liver related illnesses were excluded from the insurance
protection.
David, whose cousin works as an insurance agent, is not very surprised at the
story. He explains to his wife that after all that is what insurance companies
have to do : assess possible future risks of events covered by insurance. If
several causes are known to exist for a certain biometric feature the insurance
company will, if they cannot rule out benign reasons, proceed based on a
negative conclusion. As far as David can recollect, the precision of biometric
profiling regarding biometric pictures has increased. A large collection of high
resolution photographs made it possible to create a register of health risks.
Data was taken from the internet and social networks using advanced face
recognition software to compare the pictures and to align them with the
database. This database is operated by H.E.L.L – Health Profiling Ltd. The
company had repeatedly stressed that only publicly available pictures were
used to build the database. Rumours had spread that pictures may have been
attained by spoofing biometric passports, health cards, or some membership
cards. An investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office however
found no evidence supporting these rumours.
After all, David argues, Joanne can always submit a medical statement
indicating that she does not suffers from liver disease. Li-lian disagrees. She
feels insurance customers should not be obliged to rule out that they suffer
from certain diseases. The duty to inform insurance companies of known prior
diseases is sufficient for risk assessment, especially if the methods used by
insurance companies to gather further information are as error-prone as the
method of biometric raw data analysis seems to be.
Li-lian had heard of several US-based insurance companies asking all of their
customers for a genetic test. Based on the results many customers faced a
rate increase. In the UK and other European countries national ethical com-mittees
were currently discussing this kind of genetic profiling.

18
At Work
Li-lian’s first day back at work after her business trip is dominated by
administrative tasks. She recalls all of the changes that took place while she
was on maternity leave and cannot help but smile at the thought of how
surprised she was that day. The RFID-based service cards had replaced the
time registration device for employees. The cards were also handed out to
hotel guests and used for payment at the hotel’s lounge and recreation areas.
Li-lian’s colleagues had used the cards for access control to the hotel’s office
rooms too, until the cards were corrupted. The proprietary crypto-algorithm
used by the RFID-access card had been broken. Further, using the cards was
too unsecure for the high class hotel. To all employees of the hotel strict
security and confidentiality requirements apply because the hotel regularly
accommodates politicians, diplomats, businessmen and celebrities. Any case
of indiscretion would lead to damage to the hotel’s image and reputation
among its distinguished guests. Li-lian is in charge of the security department
at the hotel chain. For this reason her work requires an entry security level
approved by the national government.
On that first day after her maternity leave the IT-department issued her a new
password. Then she was asked to type a given text into her computer. The
access control of the hotel’s new computer system goes far beyond inserting
her service card and entering a password. Once the machine, a portable com-puter
for presentations at business partners’ premises, cannot connect to the
hotel network, the computer is set to travel mode. Being enabled, this mode
does not only require Li-lian’s login but continuously monitors her keystroke
pattern. Should anyone get access to the notebook or even force Li-lian to
hand it over while she is logged in, the computer will lock out the intruder once
the deviation in pattern is recognised by the machine. The evaluation of the
keystroke pattern method was praised by the privacy reviewer as less privacy-invasive
because the keystroke pattern is a biometric that changes over time
and thus features a built in expiry date. However, the advantage of not being
traceable after some time turned out to be a disadvantage on her first day

19
back at work. As Li-lian’s typing pattern changed massively during her mater-nity
leave she had to spend two full hours typing specimen text.
Li-lian’s thoughts turn to her 70-year-old colleague Adriel (people now work up
to 72 years in most EU jurisdictions) who was warned by the system about
emerging Parkinson’s disease. She wonders whether the system does not
only warn the affected employee but also informs her employer about identifi-able
health risks. However, storing the keystroke pattern is still less invasive
than other methods of analysing biometric raw-data like the insurance com-pany’s
procedures she heard of from Joanne.
Having just returned from her last business trip, Li-lian has to arrange her next
trip to Toronto. She has come to feel at ease with the idea of presenting her
travel documents (she holds a Chinese and a UK passport) to foreign author-ities.
Since cases of identity theft skyrocketed in the past when organised
criminals used the weak standard of the first generation of biometric pass-ports,
the EU together with the USA and some other nations reinforced the
extended access control standard (EAC) to prevent illegal readout of biometric
data. The new standard was improved to offer a considerably higher level of
security and allows Li-lian to protect her data from being read by third parties.
Public key cryptography allows only accredited scanners to read out the data.
All ICAO MRTDs issued these days have extended access control implement-ed.
Her Chinese passport, she is convinced, supports EAC.
The EU, being an international driver for passport security advancements,
decided to implement encapsulated biometrics on the European biometric
passport. Since encapsulated biometrics are used, external readers do not
access the biometric data any more. All data processing is done by the micro-processor
in the passport itself. It scans and checks the fingerprint of its
owner and confirms his identity when the check is successful. Li-lian read that
encapsulated biometrics does mitigate privacy risks as no central biometric
database is required and the risk of corruption or disclosure to unauthorised
entities is addressed. After all, if biometric data is corrupted, it is corrupted for
good. For this reason, Li-lian prefers using her UK passport.
A brief break
Li-lian and her friends grew up using social networks which became a vital
part of their everyday life, allowing them to stay in contact, share news and to
always feel connected to their loved ones even on extended journeys or while
living abroad. But the attitude of many employers towards social networks has
changed in recent years. As social networks have become so common most
employers allow their employees to let their MyComm device connect to their
different social network profiles.
Nafiseh, a friend of Li-lian applied for a job and got rejected. It seems that it
was due to some negative information in some social networks. Someone
created an account, using her name and address, copied some of her pictures
from other web pages and pictures of a student party that took place several
years ago. Even though her friend had not been on any of these party pictures,
her reputation was damaged. Furthermore, someone tagged her former home
address with negative information about her on a neighbourhood rating form.
Much of the information was collected at an old social networking site where
Li-lian’s friend entered much information during her student time - it was the
thing to do at that time (2008) to have comprehensive CVs on the web. The
service provider of the social networking platform did not use a technology for
identity verification, thus allowing anyone to forge accounts.
Li-lian uses a number of portals. However, it is important to her that the service
provider uses some kind of authentication. The social networks used by Li-lian
offer an anonymous verification. For this purpose the government citizen portal
is used. Li-lian also used a social network for health related questions informing
herself about pregnancy and labour related issues. In particular she trusted
some postings of someone claiming to be a physician who indeed was not. She
now uses another network which has technology enabling identity manage-ment.
Specialists can use credentials to anonymously write posting but are still
able to show their expert status. Thus a physician or lawyer etc. can show his
qualification to the system without disclosing his identity to other users or the
service provider. Li-lian has expert status for facility security issues.

20
At the kindergarten
Zoe has been at the kindergarten for one month. To pick her up Li-lian usually
uses her MyComm device to open the kindergarten gate. Today, however, she
forgot it on her desk. The backup system would use her biometric data instead
but Li-lian and David refused to provide this data, as the kindergarten was not
able to prove that they implemented Privacy Enhancing Technologies to avoid
misuse of the data. As Zoe is still new at the kindergarten the replacement
nursery teacher did not know Li-lian personally and had to check her passport
and the files before he allowed Li-lian to take Zoe with her. Initially the
kindergarten did not plan to keep the old-fashioned file system logging the
parent’s entitlement. However, a parent initiative successfully fought for it, as
not everyone was willing to provide a raw-data photo.
Even if Li-lian and David can avoid their biometric data being spread widely, it
does not seem likely that they can prevent Zoe’s data from being collected. A
new programme of the local government envisages taking biometric pictures
of every child and using the raw data to identify possible health risks and to
automatically check for suspicious signs of child abuse or neglect by their
parents. This, so argued a government spokesman to Li-lian’s infuriation,
should provide pre-indications for the school doctor programme enabling the
focus to be set on suspicious children and saving tax money on the service.
But rumours spread that the acquired data will also be fed into the govern-mental
databases on children, evaluating the likelihood of future criminal or
offending behaviour and the possible need for assistance by social workers.
When such databases were first introduced for convicted criminals nobody
would have ever thought of registering children at kindergarten-age within
such a database. But as pupils have been surveyed in this way for many years
and intervention of social workers, and juvenile authorities is more effective
the younger the children are, the step to include data collected at pre-schools
and kindergartens was just a question of time.
While waiting for the passport to be checked against the files, Li-lian thinks of
a case in another kindergarten where a divorced mother not having received
the right of custody managed to have somebody access the kindergarten’s
Wi-Fi and the verification reference database. By injecting her reference data
in the profile of her authorised mother-in-law she received the desired entitle-ment.
She then picked up her daughter and left for her country of origin. As
everyone thought the girl was with her grandmother no one was suspicious
until it was too late.
After finally accrediting Li-lian to pick up her daughter, the nursery teacher
uses a display to locate Zoe. All children are tracked throughout the day by
cameras using face recognition. Other parents even use the online-service to
watch the movements of their children on a floor plan of the kindergarten
viewed on their MyComm. Li-lian knows of another mother who uses the
cloth-clean function. Using this, the system does not allow her daughter to
enter the backyard when it is wet and thus dirty outdoors. She even defined
the sandpit as a no-go area. Li-lian disliked this idea. Instead she spends
some extra money for children’s clothes made from smart materials which are
very robust and easy to clean.
When thinking about tracking Zoe, a conversation with her father-in-law
comes to her mind. While Li-lian does not want to be tracked when she is old,
David’s father appreciated the new possibilities. His mother had Alzheimer’s
disease and got lost during a vacation when she left the hotel at night. It took
a long search to find her, dehydrated in the middle of a forest. While her father-in-
law feels comfortable with the idea of being tracked, Li-lian thinks that she
would only agree to a system that uses an on-demand approach which only
sends the location data when she initiates a request for aid.
Having given it much thought, Li-lian gets concerned with all the tracking. She
does not want Zoe to get too accustomed to tracking and currently considers
another kindergarten for Zoe.

22
Social networking services represent a phenomenon that is at the core of
the main battle of the Internet actors of today. We find them everywhere,
from general purpose systems supporting communities at large (e.g.
FaceBook, MySpace), to social networking systems used to network in the
“corporate” world (e.g. LinkedIn), and even as the new dating systems that
are being adopted by the younger generation (that have always lived with
computers) as well as the older generation (people that have adopted the
Internet later in life). Every big actor tries to incorporate this dimension as
representing the Eldorado of a digital territory in which business models to
be successful are still open or in which established positions can be
challenged. On the throne of the leaders of the social networking kingdom,
MySpace has been replaced by Facebook in a matter of months. Now
people are observing some stagnating of Facebook, and are looking for the
service and approach that will be the new king, Beboo representing a new
raising star, and exclusive services (selecting their members) are promising.
Given this accelerated evolution, one can wonder how far this phenomenon
will go, for instance in 15 years from now. If we imagine the ‘Facebook’ and
‘LinkedIn’ of today to be the dinosaurs of tomorrow, what will be the next
“beast” that will emerge from this frantic evolution ? The digital space will
also not have remained still. We are now already moving from the Web 2.0
(the social web) that was about connecting people, to the Web 3.0 (the
semantic web) that is about connecting knowledge, while the Web 4.0 (the
Ubiquitous web) that is about “connecting intelligences” is already on the
horizon.
Although it is nearly impossible to predict the future of 15 years from now
(for instance 15 years ago the web had not even been invented), we can
imagine that the social dimension will still continue to be very present, even if
increasingly mediated by digital tools : Man is a “social animal” that is not
ready to give-up interacting with others, even if this interaction will evolve
and will take other forms than the ones that we know of today. We can also
expect that society will continue to evolve towards more flexibility, thanks to
the technology for removing the geographical barriers. As a consequence,
people will most probably live more of their time online than they are today,
for working, learning, shopping, or entertaining or “mating”. Or rather people
will “be even more connected” since the new “communication devices” will
blur the frontier between the “physical world” and the “digital world”.
This evolution may also not necessary be synonymous with the atomisation
of the society since we can very well imagine that new tools and approaches
can also help to enforce some of the existing social structures that exist in
society such as family, or various communities. In some cases these tools
may indeed be used to reinforce social segregation.
The two scenarios presented below will provide a glimpse of the role of
identity in two digital social contexts : work (social networking for business)
and personal life (online dating systems).
Identity in the future of
the digital social landscape
Thierry Nabeth (INSEAD, France)

23
Business social at an alumni cocktail party
Li-lian has been invited to a cocktail party that is being organised by the
alumni association of the business school she attended five years ago. In this
“reunion” a professor of the business school is going to present on the subject
of personal branding, or how to manage your personal information and project
a good image of yourself in a business world, having made information
checking a preliminary of any business relationship. Well actually, when Li-lian
thinks about it, this “probing” happens now for almost any domain : colleagues
are using the internet to know more about you (what you are currently working
on, and in particular who you are working with) ; the company is using it to
form teams (being sure that the members of the team have the right
competence, motivation, and are complementary) ; and people are using it to
find dates (nice to know for instance the movies to which the other person
goes or the group this person belongs to) or to know more about the friends
of their children (although in this case it is always difficult to be sure with them,
given they use any imaginable trick to fool their parents). Finally, in her particular
case, Li-lian is using it on a regular basis in her job as the security director of
a big hotel chain to screen suspicious clients or to make enquiries about the
staff of the hotel. She is even relatively proud of being able, with the help of a
couple of ‘bots’ she has to admit, to have a high success rate at detecting in
advance people that represent a risk for the hotel. Practically, this is just a
matter of detecting some particular behavioural patterns and finding a match
in the customer database (hotel chains have been pretty good at constructing
client databases in order to better serve their clients, but also, something that
is rarely put forward, at sorting-out the good clients that are bringing revenues
from the ones bringing trouble).
Anyway, this reunion will only be about application of managing the way you
are perceived in the business world, knowing that it is increasingly difficult
keep track of all the traces that you leave in an “information space” that is
mined by a variety of bots that are only too quick at identifying and exposing
your weaknesses. To tell the truth, these same bots can also be very useful by

25
helping to get the attention of business partners or head hunters. Of particularly
importance now are people’s relationships with others, since these
relationships have appeared to represent first class information about the real
person, and in particular represents a much more reliable means than the
information that people declare about themselves. You have therefore now to
be careful who you declare you are working and interacting with (bots are
good at discovering hidden relationships), and be sure that they will be
positively perceived outside. Hiding information is not really an option, first
because it is now increasingly difficult to accomplish. Second because it
makes you easily appear as the “usual suspect” if the “bots” are not able to
find enough information about you. Consequently, only the more “adventurous”
people, or only other “usual suspects” then accept to deal with you if you
appear to originate from nowhere and in particular if you can not be connected
to people having a good reputation. “Luring services”, allowing you to literally
“buy” your relationships, look nice (some people are even “trading” their
friendliness) and can be helpful, but they can be expensive and they often do
not resist to very indepth investigation (data-mining tools are difficult to fool).
Supporting the event
Li-lian knows that this event has all the chances to be valuable for her since
chance actually has very little to do with its organisation. Indeed the alumni
association organising this event has become very professional, and makes
all efforts to guarantee that it will be a success. AlumniNet, the online platform
of the alumni is very instrumental to this success :
Firstly, this platform is used to identify the topics that are likely to attract the
most interest from members of the community. Bots in the platform are
continuously mining people’s activities, and sources of external personal
information that people have made available to them to identify the “hot
topics”. The topics include the interests that people have expressly indicated,
but also include all the more implicit interests or needs that people may not
want to declare or are not aware of, and that can be extracted from an analysis
of their digital traces. Indeed, the idea of relying only on explicit information to
know about a person has been abandoned for a long time : people do not
necessary know what they like or what they need (and often they do not want
to know), but more importantly they have more useful ways of using their time
than entering them in a profile.
Secondly, this platform is also used to help the forming of a group of alumni
that could participate in this reunion. Since this is a physical reunion (people
still like to meet in physical spaces), location-based information (that can be
retrieved via access to people’s personal agendas) is very useful to be sure
not to bother people that will not be able to physically attend. Many other ele-ments
are also used to make the reunion a success, and in particular finding
the good balance of profiles of the participants : it is usually good to have
some homogeneity in the group, but not too much since it can lead to dull
reunions. Besides, people also attend these meetings to meet faces from
other horizons, since it is more likely to generate high added business value :
if a person is too much like you, you may not learn a lot from her, or she may
be your most direct competitor with whom you may not want to have any re-lationship.
The platform is also very good at raising the attention of people
potentially interested in this event. For instance personalisation of the notifica-tion
can be helpful : some people like to be informed via their mobile MyComm
devices, while others prefer to be informed only via their big information hub
(which has huge display devices with haptic capabilities). In all these cases,
the exploitation of member’s personal information is critical.
Thirdly, and as the groups are being formed, AlumniNet also provides a useful
way to get information about people that are going to attend, and therefore
getting the most out of the reunion. Looking at their profile and looking at who
they know can be useful for this. Actually, the access to who they know is only
partial, since people are now being careful in the way they are directly exposing
their really important relationships (the relationships that are easily available
are usually the ones that make them look good, but are of minor importance).
On the other hand people are more likely to give access to their “real”

26
relationships indirectly, by allowing only the AlumniNet bots and matching
applications to access this data. These bots are for instance “authorised” to
mine people’s contacts, and to expose them indirectly, for instance by
displaying in the person’s profile what the types of people this person knows
are (bankers, business developers, consultants, venture capitalists, and so
on). Matching applications are also very convenient. For instance Li-lian is able
to use a matching application to identify participants that are most likely to be
valuable to her and that will be worth having a chat with at this reunion. This
is something that she can add to her mobile MyComm device, so that later at
the reunion she will be reminded when she is physically close to the person.
This is a function provided by the BusiNessAccelerator© service to which she
has registered on her MyComm device. This same service will also allow her
to indicate a social relationship (in the old days it would have meant exchanging
business cards), but more importantly to instantly associate additional
information such as her first impression of the person via some annotation or
some voice or video recording (some people are even known to hide cameras,
but shooting videos at the end of a meeting is a practice that is now largely
accepted).
Well, now time to go and listen to this professor. Li-lian will wear her new
“gadget” : a “smart” scarf that manages to get access to some of her brain
waves and displays some information about her mood. Li-lian will have to try
controlling her feelings, but this promises to be a lot of fun, in particular since
she knows (from AlumniNet) that other participants will wear similar gadgets
(for instance men will wear a “smart” tie). No doubt that these will be a good
opportunity to add new people, and have her profile look even better. Why not
have more private bankers in her network or a management guru ? Certainly
to this end the professor appears to rank fairly well in the “people that count”
service available on the Wall Street Journal.
Dating
Many years ago, a study by Robert Epstein had shown that everybody was
lying in dating services : women appeared to be slimmer, blonder and younger
than they are in real life, and the men happened to be richer. By now, this has
just become common knowledge, and everybody knows that you cannot
really trust these services, even the ones that pretend to be the most exclusive
and that filter their members.
Yet this does not prevent these dating services to exist and to prosper. These
services have even become a part of life for the young generation as a way to
socialise. Actually, playing at creating false images has even appeared as a
sport to some of its sub-groups and a societal phenomenon for this genera-tion.
These services are also extensively used by older generations wanting to
“settle down” and that look for an efficient way to find the perfect mate (people
are becoming very difficult now, and are looking at these systems not only to
reach more people, but also to have some guarantee that the other persons
have the desired “qualities”).
In all these cases, the construction of an online identity is critical, and relies
on an art of showing yourself that can barely be considered as new. Indeed,
when you think about it, this “art of showing yourself” has existed for
millennia : for instance, men and women have dressed and used make-ups
to try to seduce the other all through history. However, now in the social hubs
(a new name for the aggregation of services supporting some social process)
this art of disguise has taken on totally new proportions since appearance is
not only about how you look in a picture or a video, but how your avatar (a
3D or 2D representation of yourself) looks and behaves, who you pretend to
know (the limits of “showing” your level of connectedness that existed in the
real world have totally exploded in the online world !), what your personality
is (the results of personality tests can be made available) or what your
activities are (sports you practice, books you read, etc.). In the later cases,
the connection to some services (digital libraries, supermarkets, or even
location-based services) makes the declaration of the activities quasi-

28
automatic and effortless, and provides a good feeling of reliability. In certain
cases this feeling is consistent with the reality, whereas in some other cases
it is totally the opposite. For instance some groups of people (that like to be
referred to as “the Transluscents”) have incorporated into their life the
principle of full transparency. The “transluscents”, who in their youth had the
opportunity to experiment with micro-blogging services (for instance using
“Twitter” for declaring their more insignificant actions or thoughts), are now
using devices that make some of this tracking automatic. For some other
groups (that like to be referred to as “the Opaques”) “fooling the systems”
has become almost a way of life : members of this group are using totally
forged activities generators with the aim of demonstrating their activism at
defending privacy. These members are taking pleasure in displaying streams
of activities that create confusion in the applications exploiting this
information. Needless to say that fooling dating services is an activity that is
particular praised amongst the “Opaque” group. Contests have even been
organised for creating the best false identity that will be the most efficient at
getting the most “dates”.
Audrey, David’s younger sister, a long time user of these social hubs, knows
very well the “rule of the game” of dating systems. This is especially because
one of her former boyfriends was an activist of the Opaque group movement.
This time however Audrey, who is getting older and would like to settle down,
plans to use the system more seriously to help her find a long term relation-ship.
“Why not use a dating system to look for the perfect mate ?”... “I know
the system well, and therefore, I am confident that I will protect my privacy,
and will not be manipulated”… “I also know what to expect, and therefore I will
not be disappointed”.
Action !
For this “mission”, Audrey has chosen a “social hub” (well, the term dating
systems is no longer used except to mean something rather negative) that is
more specifically dedicated to an older audience. Actually, the affiliation to this

29
hub is subject to the agreement from the other members by a voting system.
Audrey had to present herself before being accepted. The rejection rate of this
process is however low since the operator of this hub wants to have as many
customers as possible, but it helps to create a first level of filtering, and in
particular discards people that are really too weird. Audrey was therefore able
to pass this first gateway without difficulty, although she was initially a little bit
worried that they would discover her past associations with the Opaques. But
her fear was not founded, especially since the operator of a hub is strictly for-bidden
to share the personal information with another operator and besides,
there is so much competition between the operators that they never exchange
information.
When moving to this new hub Audrey was able to bring part of the “Identity”
that she had developed in one of the previous hubs she was member of. How-ever,
to tell the truth, Audrey would like to make a radical change, and actu-ally
prefers to leave behind most of her previous identity that represents an-other
period of her life. She will of course only import to the new hub the part
of herself that is consistent with the new life she wants to construct. But she
will also take care to erase all the information that she would not like to see
pop-up in the new hub, such as the set of pictures of her graduation in which
she is dressed as a clown, drinks champagne, smokes, and makes some pro-vocative
poses. However, the process of “migration of identity” is now easy
(the operators have made a lot of effort to make switching to their hub as easy
as possible, thanks also to the adoption of standards for exporting personal
information), and Audrey was able to monitor and control the transfer at a very
small level of detail.
Since Audrey had decided to start from almost a “blank sheet” in this hub, she
had to construct an almost completely new profile. She also used a pseudo-nym
: Audrey had little desire to embarrass herself with her colleagues or even
worse with the members of her family. Selecting the most adequate attributes
in her profile, so as to project the most advantageous image of her, turned out
not to be an easy task. Indeed, “ShineoMatic”, the “impact assessment tools”
assessing the attractiveness of her profile kept returning a “lousy” feedback.
First ShineoMatic indicated that her current profile was mainly able to attract
married persons, or very young people looking for an adventure ! Really, this
was not what she was looking for his time ! For her second attempt, Shineo-
Matic indicated that she only looked attractive to low paid school teachers.
Maybe this was because she had put in her profile that she was altruistic. With
further revisions of her profile she appeared to appeal to accountants, farmers
and bisexuals. After several other adjustments (that many would consider as
falsifying the reality), Audrey finally managed to create a profile that was ap-pealing
to the right kind of person : the tall and handsome artists or journalist
she was looking for.
A more difficult exercise to be conducted by Audrey was raising her level of
visibility in the social space by participating in the numerous communications
and events taking place in the community. An example would be to participate
in the relationships advices forum. However, on a subject like this people tend
to reveal more information about themselves than they want, and Audrey
would prefer not to disclose some of her very definite opinions about marriage
without risking potential relationships. For the time being her involvement in
travel and cinema related discussions will do. Audrey has travelled a lot, and
she knows a lot about cinema, two interests which her “perfect mate” prob-ably
shares. Posting and interacting related to these two topics would also
automatically contribute to building her “interest profile”, which she had to
validate after only a few corrections.
“Well, let’s start with this and see how many invitations I receive”. The reality
check will in any case be done later, when the “real physical encounter” will
happen, given that you can still have many surprises. Last small revision,
activation
of the profile, and joy : already some matches ! “Wait a moment, one
of my first matches is George, my former boyfriend the Opaque ! What a big liar
he is, he who pretended not so long ago that dating systems were only for the
ugly, sociopathic or the dilettante !!!”

30
Virtually Living in Virtual Reality
Claude Fuhrer & Bernhard Anrig (VIP, Switzerland)
The use of virtual reality is still very limited for people, although the success
of entertainment devices, like the Wii, proves that if one can diminish the
price of the hardware, there really is a market for such tools. Multicore
processors, computers with more than one graphics card, high performance
graphics processors are already available for the general public. In Western
Europe, Very High Speed DSL (VDSL) networks are available almost
everywhere (at least in most urban areas), which allow users to easily reach
databases containing standardised descriptions of virtual worlds. All these
tools provide an indication that virtual reality could soon enter into our
homes and be widely popular. Virtual reality could be quickly and widely
adopted as soon as it has found its killer application, that is, the application
that would convince enough people to buy into it.

31
A visit to the supermarket
During breakfast David sees that the fridge is almost empty. Moreover, the list
of important things to buy, which is stuck on the door of the fridge is very long.
He probably has to go shopping today. He has always considered this activity
as being very boring, and even if the high-tech supermarket shop-bots may
do a lot of the work, he does not rely on them. They are rarely very good at
choosing the big red tomatoes or a sweet smelling and juicy melon.
Even if most of the time people nowadays go themselves to the shop, some
supermarkets offer a virtual shop to their customers which one can visit using
a virtual reality (VR) system. This virtual reality system is mainly a VR-suit that,
at first sight, one may mistake for a diving suit. It is made of special material
to fit as snugly as possible to the body and is equipped with a lot of sensors
and effectors. The suit consists firstly of the helmet, which has a high resolu-tion
retinal projector, allowing the user to have a real three-dimensional view
of the environment. Into the helmet, one may additionally build in a high-per-formance
sound system which gives very precise information for locating ele-ments
of the environment. The latest generation of helmets even has a scent
diffusion system integrated. Based on a similar idea to an imaging system, one
can, mixing a limited number of base odours, reproduce a great range of per-fumes.
The second part of the suit is the pair of gloves. These gloves are haptic
devices allowing the user to “touch” the things he sees. Using these gloves,
David can feel the form of the object, its rigidity and temperature, but not
texture. The suit itself is also a haptic device. The arms may behave more or
less rigidly to simulate the weight of the object which David touches. It may
also simulate some external contacts to different parts of the user’s body,
letting the user know when he touches a (virtual) object in the environment.
Watching the technology channel, David has learned that some laboratories are
working on an “extension” of the suit. This extension will consist of a cortical
interface which should help the user feel the velocity and acceleration, perhaps
not so needed for his supermarket experience, but very handy for playing

32
games like aeronautical fighting. Another advantage of these cortical interfaces
is that they should diminish or even remove the famous “cyber sickness”. But
not all people agree with this new aspect. In the newspapers one can regularly
read some letters to the editor (even from university professors and recognised
scientists) arguing that these interfaces could allow the firm that produces them
to take control of the brain of their users, for example by influencing their political
opinion or changing their shopping behaviour. During the 20th century there
were many warnings of the possible use of subliminal pictures in advertising, but
no one was really able to prove it. But this fear seems much more serious now.
As such, David chooses not to have such options.
Before wearing his suit, David chooses a supermarket, and feeds the list of
things he has to buy into his computer. He is totally aware that everything he
buys in this shop could then be used (and probably will be used) to profile him
and his family. For example insurance companies use profiling to check if
someone is eating too much sugar or too many “rich meals”. The laws do not
allow a firm to ask a potential female employee if she is pregnant, but knowing
– through profiling – that she has recently bought some pregnancy tests may
be a sign that she will need maternity leave in the near future.
To protect against these more or less aggressive profiling methods, David has
on his computer a program which warns him if he deviates from an “average
Joe” profile. This is surely not a perfect solution, but better than nothing.
Moreover, whenever possible he always tries to reach the best anonymity he
can. But, for the present case, where the things he wants to buy should be
delivered to his home, it is necessary to reveal his real name and address. For
activities like shopping, David should be registered, and so his personal data
are stored in a database at every shop (or at least every chain of shops). To
lower the risk of profiling, every member of the family shares the same virtual
identity. This means that the shopping platform is not necessarily able to dis-tinguish
David from Li-lian. It can try to infer if the virtual shopper is a man or
a woman, based on some standard profiles, but it will never be totally sure of
the real identity of the family member who is actually present.

33
When he has his suit on, he starts the program which opens for him the doors
of the virtual supermarket. He can then walk along the aisles between the
shelves and pick whatever he needs. But, unlike real shops, he regularly sees
some items jumping out of the shelves and “dancing” in front of him or calling
him. Why precisely these items ? Because, in virtual reality, one can profile the
customer in much more detail than is possible in real life. Here, the system
may be aware of everything David has touched or even seen in the past within
this supermarket (or even other ones which collaborate). The supermarket has
very precise information about the type of package (colour, size or form) David
likes, and then may propose (or impose) a customised shop, built to attract the
eyes of David and convince him to buy more than he planned. For example,
there is stracciatella gelato in the middle of the path, blinking and calling him.
The ice cream was not on the list he entered but he loves stracciatella. Since
he was a kid this was always his favourite. He picks up the box to add it to his
shopping cart. Immediately a red light is blinking at the tip of his finger. This is
his anti-profiling program which is warning him that he has already bought too
many sweets, and his health insurance company may consider that all this
sugar is a sign to check if his family should be switched to a bad risk customer
category. He is now informed that if he wants another dessert, he has to go to
buy it in the real world and pay in cash. One can note here that in this situation,
the virtual world acts as an interface between the real world where David lives
and the real world where the goods are. What David sees in his virtual shops
are, for example, real fruits. This is necessary to allow him to choose the sweet
smelling melons he loves.
When David has collected all he needs, he is ready to pay. Another advantage
of virtual shopping is that there is no need to wait in the queue of the checkout.
At the end of every aisle, there is a (virtual) button which will automatically
establish the bill of the customer. The identification of the user is done by the
different biometrical sensors embedded into the VR-suit. The data of David’s
credit card are already known by the supermarket and within seconds, the
billing process is finished.
The goods he bought will be delivered during the afternoon to his home.
Before he takes his helmet off, the idea of planning the next holiday with his
family crosses his mind. Looking at the catalogues of travel agencies is very
interesting, but, using an immersive tool to check “directly” the view of a beach
in the Caribbean is much more exciting. He just wants to have a quick glance
and not have to identify himself. Therefore, he disables the identifying process
in his computer. Pointing a finger at the top displays a menu in front of him. He
then just has to point his finger to the needed functionality to make him almost
anonymous. Then, he can walk along the beach and check which hotel he
would like to book for his holidays. While anonymously walking on the beach,
the information he gets on the hotels, their advantages or actual room prices
are not personalised and, for example, no discounts (based on e.g. recent
stays in the same hotel company) are available. When he has selected his fa-vourite
hotel, he can still identify himself to look at the discounts etc. available,
but for now, he prefers to stay anonymous in order not to get too much un-wanted
advertising over the coming days.
For this situation, the virtual word in which David walks is probably not the real
world around the area where he plans to spend his vacations. For the purpose
of advertising, the company has probably chosen a day where the weather is
nice and sunny, where the season shows a nice environment, etc. They may
however claim that it is virtually the same !

34
The Matrix may be thought of as the future of virtual reality, but the Grid, a
high performance distributed computing infrastructure, has been conceived
as the future of collaborative problem-solving. In the same way that the
World Wide Web opened up content, the Grid will not only open up storage
and processing power, but resources (e.g. computational, informational) in
general. Allowing for the communication of heterogeneous geographically
dispersed resources, the Grid brings a new era in collaboration and
decision-making.
The Grid can offer transparent and instant access to data of different
formats, obtained by sensors or the result of simulations or processing,
either publicly available or with restricted access, combined from multiple
sites, either permanent or (non) periodically updated, serving various
purposes. Moreover, through the computational power offered by the Grid
Infrastructure, computationally complex tasks can now be fulfilled within a
satisfying timeframe. The Grid is a potential solution to the great need for
computational resources in the application of profiling techniques in real
world cases, and primarily in large scale ones requiring secure information
exchange among different trusted entities in real-time.
This scenario describes the experience of a traveller who is aided through
emerging technologies, which are served by a Grid Infrastructure, showing
both the strengths of such an Infrastructure as well as the threats deriving
from its powerful collaborative capabilities. The technologies mentioned
include biometrics, used mainly for identification purposes, the Grid as a
secure and flexible infrastructure, and profiling and location-based services
for commercial purposes through the provision of personalised ads and
Powering the profile : Plugging into the Grid guidance.
Vassiliki Andronikou (ICCS, Greece)

35
Travelling to Rhodes
After an extremely busy period at work, David is now ready for his summer vacation.
As his wife had one more week off than him, they have arranged to meet in Rhodes,
so he will be travelling on his own. After packing his bags he activates his tourist
profile on his personal MyComm device and enriches it with special preferences for
this trip (things he might be interested in buying, his holiday companions, etc). Then,
he sets off to Heathrow airport’s terminal 5. The moment he arrives, the “myFlight”
service running on his MyComm contacts the airport database for departure
information. After the credentials for this interaction
are checked, it sends him an
SMS indicating the check-in counter he should go to as well as the gate his flight
will be departing from. At the counter a camera captures his face image (both frontal
and side view) and performs facial recognition. After being positively identified, he
checks-in and he goes for a coffee at one of the many airport cafés. Meanwhile,
without his knowledge the facial image captured is also compared against a set of
facial images of wanted people of high importance stored in a database in Italy. As
David’s third match of the combined gridified facial recognition algorithms was
“Mario Martucci” – one of the most wanted people in Italy – with a match probability
above the predefined threshold the “GentleWatchAbout” service gets triggered and
accesses David’s photo and id-related data (cell phone number, passport number).
For security reasons the “GentleWatchAbout” service has the credentials to use a
variety of services. The “myFlight” service periodically contacts the airport database
for further departure information and after a while David receives a notification on
his mobile phone indicating that there will be a one-hour delay of his flight and so
he decides to activate the “myPlaces” application. This contacts the “AirportPlaces”
service to get information about points of interest within the airport and after
processing the provided list and comparing it with David’s preferences stored in the
“Travellers’ Profile” database in Greece, it suggests for him to go to the “A little
Shirty” store which has good offers on shirts, which are his favourite clothes to buy.
David decides to do so. He spends most of his time there and 10 minutes before
his gate opens he receives a scheduled notification SMS from the “myFlight” service
which indicates that he should proceed to his gate. As David gets really bored
during flights, he is happy to find out that the plane offers a service that, after you
choose a song from the list it provides, it composes a playlist matching the original
song selected.
As David arrives in Athens, he has to change flight to get to Rhodes, but his flight
is in 5 hours time. The “myPlaces” service contacts the “AthensPlaces” service
and the “AthensTransportation” service and it processes the retrieved records
based on his time left. The service sends him an SMS informing him that based
on the time available he can go downtown for a walk, providing him with photos
of places he could visit. David chooses to go downtown and asks the “myPlaces”
service for more information. His request is also automatically sent to
the “GentleWatchAbout” service. The service contacts the “AthensPlaces”
service to retrieve
more information for downtown places, taking into account
David’s love for art and presents him with a list of options, such as the Parthe-non,
the National Museum, the National Gallery, as well as famous local cafés
and restaurants. David chooses to visit the Parthenon. The service then con-tacts
the “AthensTransportations” to obtain information about the means of
transportation that could get him there. The latter makes near instant calcula-tions
within the Grid based on his current location as well as the available means
of transportation and current traffic. The service informs him that he could take
metro Line 3 from the airport, get off at Monastiraki station and then enjoy a nice
walk indicated on a map provided. This has clearly taken into account that
David enjoys walking and the weather in Athens is sunny. Alternatively, he can
avoid walking too much and just take the metro Line 3 to Syntagma and then
change to metro Line 2 to Acropolis station or he can hire a taxi that will take
about 35 minutes to get there. The service also gives him information about the
entrance fee for the Parthenon. David chooses to take the second option that,
according to the service, will take him about 40 minutes to get there.
As soon as David arrives at Acropolis station, “myPlaces” requests information
about the surrounding monuments from the “AthensPlaces” service which in turn
contacts the “AthensMonuments” service and instantly sends him historical
information about the Acropolis and the surrounding monuments. Meanwhile, the

36
“myPlaces” service – whenever David moves to another place – requests
processing of the retrieved list of places based on his currently activated profile.
In the meantime, “myPlaces” sends David’s current position and preferences to
the “GentleWatchAbout” service. Policemen in the area get a notification from
“GentleWatchAbout” that a potential suspect for international thefts with low
surveillance priority is at the specific location and are supplied with his photo.
David enjoys his visit, but after a couple of hours he gets a scheduled notification
on his mobile phone by the “myFlight” service that his flight will depart in 2 hours.
David activates the “myPlaces” service so that he can choose the means of
transportation back to the airport. As he is really tired, he chooses to take a taxi
and so the “myPlaces” service contacts the “AthensTransportation” service which
in turn contacts the “AthensTaxis” service and calls one for him. After a few
seconds he receives an SMS that the taxi will be there in 20 minutes and suggests
he goes to a café nearby. As David has activated his tourist profile, the service
asks David if he has a preference about the route the taxi will take and after the
service activates the previous workflow it prompts him with two choices : through
the historic centre which will take him about one hour and should cost him about
40 euros and the highway which will take him 30 minutes and should cost him
about 25 euros. David chooses the first one and then decides to wander around
a little bit to enjoy the view before the taxi arrives. Before David started his trip to
Greece he had enriched his tourist profile by adding among others “pasteli” as
one of his favourite foods. Thus, the “myPlaces” service sends a profile-based
processing request to the “AthensPlaces” service and David receives a notification
that a shop with many local delights is right on the corner where he can find
pasteli. David is really excited about this and decides to pay a visit to the shop.
When David gets to the check-out counter, he gives 20 euros for his 10 euro
purchase and forgets to take his change. As he gets out of the store the owner
starts running after him. A policeman just across the street that had received the
“GentleWatchOut” notification notices the incident and heads towards them but
realises it is a false alarm as soon as the two men shake hands. After 20 minutes,
the taxi arrives and David enjoys the route he selected for the taxi to follow, while
on the screen of his mobile phone information about the monuments in the
historical centre are displayed. When David arrives at the airport the “myFlight”
service, after communication with the GPS service, contacts the airport database
and he receives a “myFlight” notification about the gate he should be heading for
within the next 15 minutes.
The flight takes off and he is on his way to Rhodes. As soon as the flight takes off
his wife receives an SMS from the “myFlight” service that David will arrive at
Rhodes airport in 45 minutes. Li-lian sets off to the airport to welcome David to
Rhodes. However, the security check at the airport for David is quite thorough. He
experiences a one hour delay to get his baggage due to extensive security checks
at the airport which had received a notification from the “GentleWatchAbout”
service. After one hour and a half David manages to reach the car where Li-lian is
waiting for him. The days go by happily and the couple enjoy the sun and the sea.
As they are sitting at the beach, David receives an SMS from the “myFriends”
service that Fotis – a good friend of theirs – is also in town. David asks for more
information and after the “myFriends” service contacts the GPS service about the
specific user and after numerous calculations are carried out within the Grid, he
finds out that Fotis in fact is at a bar near their beach so they decide to join him.
Fotis is very happy to meet the couple and they all enjoy their drinks together.
Night falls, and they find a nice bar to start their evening. As they are about to enter
the bar, David receives an SMS by “myFriends” service that Sofia – his ex-girlfriend
the name of which he had left in his list of friends - is there as well. As he would
not like the two girls to meet, David tells them that he just received a notification
about a nice bar at the end of the street that he had seen the previous night and
so they go there instead. As the “myPlaces” service gets information from the
GPS service that they are not going to the same bar with Sofia, it automatically
sends an information update to the “myFriends” service about David lowering the
priority for Sofia in his friends list. The notification is sent to the service and after
processing within the Grid, the update is performed. Time passes by and after
two relaxing weeks come to an end, the couple prepares to go back home, again
ably assisted by the personalised location-based services.

38
The role of forensics in identity
Mark Gasson (University of Reading, UK),
Zeno Geradts (NFI, The Netherlands)
The aim of forensic research is to support investigatory and judicial
processes by finding traces in otherwise apparently unpromising raw
material from which it is possible to build a picture of events and activities.
Locard’s Principle is at the foundation of what forensic scientists do : “Every
contact leaves a trace”. Clearly forensics and identity are inherently linked
because the aim is typically to identify a person or persons, or to link a
person with an activity at a scene. As forensic techniques improve, the
knowledge of how to defeat them also keeps in step. As such, the
investigator has to keep in mind that what the evidence points to may not in
fact be correct, and as such a broader picture is necessary.
Here, set in a world not too dissimilar to today, the scenario will explore how
biometric identification can be spoofed such that someone is implicated in a
crime, and how future advances in forensic techniques could subsequently
prove innocence.

39
A rude awakening
The digital readout on the clock flashes to 03:05 – the night is very still, and the
Craggs are sound asleep. While the people may be resting, the house is very
much awake. Such uninterrupted time is ideal for dedicated number crunching
– a time when all the data collated during the day can be sorted, cleaned and
processed to yield new information to update and augment current profiles
being
used in the system. That is, however, until the system flags a new pri-mary
task – the security system’s proximity sensors have detected an anoma-lous
movement in the vicinity of the front door. Because of their countryside
location, and the local wildlife inhabitants, such an event is not unusual. Indeed
the system is able to monitor through a variety of sensors to establish whether
an event is of true importance. As the threat level flicks from amber to red, it
appears in this case it very much is. In line with David’s preferences, the lights
in the bedroom are switched on dimly, and a computer generated voice tries to
wake him from his slumber with a warning. He comes round in time to hear an
almighty crash at the front door, a thunder of feet pounding through the house,
and the sound of men shouting down the hallways.
Ello, ello, ello…
By late morning, things have started to become somewhat clearer. The hasty
arrest of David’s wife Li-lian for ‘data theft’, and the immediate confiscation of
their laptop computers and primary house server during the police raid had
shed precious little light on the situation. In fact little was revealed during the
associated chaos until Li-lian’s interview with the detective in charge of the
case some hours later. It transpired that someone had gained high level
access
to the computer system in the hotel where Li-lian worked, and had
stolen the personal details, including banking and credit card numbers, from
their customer database. A partial print and DNA left at the scene had been
cross referenced with the UK’s national ID card and national DNA databases,
and had placed Li-lian in the top ten of likely matches. Knowing that Li-lian did
not have security clearance for the main server room where the security
breach occurred – finding her partial fingerprint and DNA there appeared to
be quite damning evidence. The only problem was that not only did Li-lian
emphatically deny any knowledge of the crime, she also appeared to have an
alibi for the time it occurred …
Good old fashioned high-tech forensic police work
It was certainly true that Li-lian did not fit the profile of a cyber-criminal, and
this had cast doubt from the beginning of the investigation. However, identity
theft was big business, and the police had taken a rapidly growing interest in
it over the last few years. As such, it was now procedure to confiscate personal
computer equipment for searching before anything could be removed or de-leted.
Of concern was the fact that no evidence could be found on the com-puters,
and that the profiling agent on Li-lian’s home server indicated that she
was in fact at home with her family at the time of the attack - something which
her husband readily confirmed. This left something of a conundrum – some-one
had managed to defeat the iris scanner on the door to the server room to
gain access, had stolen personal data, and had then left the fingerprint of
someone else. As all leads began to look cold, there came a stroke of luck.
The details of the crime had, as usual, been entered into the local police sta-tion’s
database. While databases across the country were not explicitly linked
per se, the UK police force now uses a system called LinKSeE, an artificially
intelligent data-mining program which distributes software agents across the
isolated police databases which hunt for patterns and correlations, and
generate
new, potentially useful knowledge. In this case, the system had noted
a case six months previously in a different police jurisdiction which had a very
similar modus operandi. Indeed, not only was the target again a hotel, and the
method of attack identical, but the system had cross-referenced the employee
lists from both hotels and had come up with a match.

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