The Role of Identity in Pervasive Computational Trust

Abstract

A central element in the human notion of trust is to identify whom or what is under consideration. In the digital world, this is harder to achieve due to more or less trustworthy technical infrastructure between interacting parties. However, we argue that uncertain identification may enhance privacy protection. Pervasive computing – digital and real world becoming one – has also good sides: context- awareness of computing systems allow for auto-configuration of privacy protection and trust-based decision making based on context. Proliferation of sensor technology threatens privacy though, as trust inherently conflicts with privacy. We present the role of identity and how identity can be managed in a trust-based security framework, in order to balance these concerns, and present a discussion of our design and implementation choices.