cfp: Workshop on Privacy Enforcement and Accountability with Semantics, at ISWC'07 & ASWC'07

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Call For Papers

WORKSHOP ON PRIVACY ENFORCEMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITY WITH SEMANTICS
Held in conjunction with the 6th International Semantic Web Conference and
the 2nd Asian Semantic Web Conference,
Busan, Korea, Nov 12, 2007

URL: http://www.L3S.de/~olmedilla/events/2007/PEAS07/

Workshop Motivation and Goal
----------------------------

The concept of information sharing has dramatically changed with the
new digital era. Handheld devices that could provide highly personal
information about the owner (e.g., RFID, GPS) are becoming more
pervasive. Our use of the Web also leads to the implicit sharing of
information with others through our blogs, websites, social networks,
Semantic Desktop sharing, clickstream tracking, as well as through the
photographs, documents, and bookmarks we post on sites such as Flickr,
Zoomr, and Delicious. Disclosing information to third parties may have
unexpected consequences since a receiver of such information might
easily use, copy, and redistribute it in ways not intended for by the
owner. Users must understand the implications of using such devices or
applications and providing information to third parties. Even though
users may prevent the direct disclosure of sensitive information by an
access control mechanism and the information being leaked may not seem
private, sensitive information may revealed by inferences drawn from
non-sensitive data and metadata. Examples include identifying a user
and providing her sensitive information through a simple search engine
query log, and retrieving medical data from sets of anonymized
records.  Thus along with privacy enforcement, accountability is also
important because it may not always be possible to prevent third
parties from obtaining sensitive information but accountability helps
ensure that this information is used according to certain policies
defined by the law or by the owner.

The role of Semantic Web research in privacy and accountability is
two-fold. On the one hand, Semantic Web techniques may be used in
order to provide advanced privacy and accountability mechanisms. Using
formal languages with well-defined semantics in order to represent,
reason about, and exchange such information helps to make it
non-ambiguously understood by others. Privacy ontologies, sticky
policies attached to data, accountability logics, and efforts such as
the Creative Commons are some examples. Semantic Web languages can
also be used to specify and track provenance of information, which is
useful for accountability. Representing information in Semantic Web
languages can also prevent sensitive information from being inferred
by providing built in semantic models that can be used to recognize
some potential inference channels. Another possible way to protect
privacy is to disclose an appropriately generalized (or vague) answer
to a query.  For example, the query "where is John now" might be
answered with "in room ITE 329 on the UMBC Campus " or "on the UMBC
campus" or "somewhere in Maryland" depending on John's privacy
preferences and the identify of the requester. Semantic Web languages
provide a natural mechanism for generalization through their subclass
structuring. The second role of Semantic Web research in this area is
that privacy enforcement and accountability also apply to many
emergent Semantic Web research topics. As an example, semantic desktop
sharing poses questions about what to share, under which conditions,
and how to control the usage of such information in a way that the
privacy of the user is not violated. Understanding the new
requirements that these scenarios pose is crucial for the short-term
research in the area.

This workshop will bring together researchers interested in the field
in order to discuss and analyze important requirements and open
research issues in this context, taking into account both
perspectives: how can Semantic Web techniques help and which
requirements arise from current Semantic Web research lines.  The
workshop will deliver a state-of-the-art overview and successful
research advances in the area as well as guidelines for future
research.


Workshop topics
---------------

Workshop topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

- Ontologies for privacy
- Techniques for privacy, anonymity, pseudonymity, and unlinkability
- Privacy management & enforcement
- Information hiding and watermarking
- Information provenance 
- Inference channels
- Generalization of answers
- Privacy policy specifications and business rules
- Negotiations and incentives for cooperation enforcement
- Accountability
- Privacy and personalization
- Privacy and mobility
- User- and context-awareness in privacy, security and trust
- P3P
- Digital Rights Management
- Creative Commons
- Pervasive technologies (RFID, cellular networks, WiFi) and Semantic Web
- Case studies, prototypes, and experiences
- Desktop search and sharing


Paper Submission
----------------

We welcome both full research papers (10 pages) describing completed
research as well as position papers (5 pages) describing proposed
research or work in progress, as long as they are well-argued,
fully-justified and contain some preliminary results. We also seek
demonstration papers (1-5 pages) outlining practical work in this
field.

Paper submissions must be formatted in the style of the Springer
Publications format for Lecture Notes in Computer Science
(LNCS). Please refer to the Springer's Author Instructions at
http://www.springeronline.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,5-164-2-72376-0,00.html

Papers should be submitted electronically via the PEA EasyChair page

Important dates:
* Submission deadline: July 27, 2007 (midnight GMT + 1)
* Notification for acceptance: August 31, 2007
* Camera ready due: Sep 14, 2007


Organizing Committee
--------------------

Tim Finin, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Lalana Kagal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Daniel Olmedilla, L3S Research Center and University of Hanover


Program Committee
------------------------------------

- Piero Bonatti, University of Naples
- Grit Denker (SRI)
- Sandro Etalle, University of Twente
- Tim Finin, UMBC
- Yolanda Gil (ISI and USC)
- Lalana Kagal, MIT
- Wolfgang Nejdl, L3S and University of Hannover
- Daniel Olmedilla, L3S and University of Hannover
- Alexander Pretschner, ETH Zurich
- Pierangela Samarati, University of Milano
- Ralph R. Swick, MIT and W3C
- William Winsborough, GMU
- Daniel Weitzner, MIT and W3C
- Marianne Winslett, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Received on Monday, 2 July 2007 15:38:25 UTC