KTH Royal Institute of Technology

ICT School

ID2012 - Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous Computing for BigData Insight: Helpful Tool or

Privacy Breaker?

Author:

Gianmario Spacagna

Supervisor:

Prof. Fredrik Kilander

June 5, 2012

Contents

1 Introduction on the Character of Ubiquitous Computing 2

2 The potential of Big Data 4

2.1 How much BD is big? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2.2 What is this data worth? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2.2.1 Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2.2.2 Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2.2.3 Retail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2.2.4 Manufacturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2.2.5 Personal Location Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2.3 Exploiting the full potential . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

3 Ubiquitous Computing for Customer Insight Data 7

3.1 What is ”insight” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

3.1.1 Case study: Tesco Loyalty Card . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

3.2 How sensors can measure the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

3.3 Big Data growth through Ubiquitous Computing . . . . . . . . . . 10

4 Related Personal Works 11

4.1 Market Customers Insight Tracking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

4.2 UbiSalus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

5 Privacy Issues 13

5.1 Protection of Data and Privacy of Users in the Ubiquitous Comput-

ing systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

5.2 Big Data Privacy Invasion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

5.2.1 US blueprint for a ”Privacy Bill of Rights” . . . . . . . . . . 15

5.2.2 EU directive and ”right to be forgotten” . . . . . . . . . . . 17

6 Conclusion 18

1

1 Introduction on the Character of Ubiquitous

Computing

The next generation of devices able to access to the Internet and the Web may not

be characterized by computers, smartphones, tablets or appliances designed for

this specific purpose. Every common item of daily life might be able to connect to

online services whilst people using them are completely not aware of it. The Apple

Research center study describes the future of computing and of people interaction

in a networked society rising a new computing concept. The Apple vision is briefly

explained by Frank Casanova, who says:

”The Concept of computers as things that you walk up to, sit in

front of and turn on will go away. In fact, our goal is to make the

computer disappear. We are moving towards a model we think of as a

’personal information cloud’. That cloud has already begun to coalesce

in the form of the Internet. The Internet is the big event of the decade

[...]. We’ll spend the next 10 years making the Net work as it should,

making it ubiquitous.” [Frank Casanova].

This new concept has been named by Mark Weiser as Ubiquitous Computing

(UC). The original idea can be summarized as follow:

”Dwelling with computers means that they have their place, and

we ours, and we co-exist comfortably. Unfortunately, our existing

metaphors for computers [are] inadequate to describe the ’dwelling’ re-

lationship. Over the next twenty years computers will inhabit the most

trivial things: clothes labels (to track washing), co↵ee cups (to alert

cleaning sta↵ to moldy cups), light switches (to save energy if no one

is in the room), and pencils (to digitize everything we draw). In such

a world, we must dwell with computers, not just interact with them.”

[Mark Weiser, 1996].

The aim of UC is to move the computation in many small, embedded and spe-

cialized devices present in our dynamic environments while remaining totally trans-

parent to the users around. Ubiquitous concept is a new revolutionary paradigm

2

that will widespread information systems inside our society, creating a cutting-edge

networked society.

To understand possible candidates of UC devices, it may be useful to mention

Dick Rijken’s own vision of UC:

”It can drag interactivity away from technological fascination and

wizardry into the realm of human experience and action. What is be-

ing designed is no longer a medium or a tool in the traditional sense,

but something far more intangible, embedded in a continuously chang-

ing environment where everything is connected to everything else.”

[Dick Rijken, 1994.].

In short, a product to be defined an UC product has to be present everywhere,

to be small and to be aware of the context where he is located. These three char-

acteristics permits the user to interact with the devices with a complete freedom

of movement and without technical knowledge dependency.

All of this is sustained by the industry interests in ubiquitous applications, their

business opportunities and the growing of related technologies such as: Internet of

Things, Smart Spaces, Sensors Networks and so on. Yet, there are some limitations

due to the hardware costs, maintenance and low scalability, but also and foremost

for the distrustful public opinion regarding the massive adoption of these new

technologies.

This implies developers and manufacturers of ubiquitous technologies to care-

fully consider the social and ethic impact, which may negative influence the busi-

ness model and market value of the product. Nevertheless, UC technologies applied

in a non-invasive manner can lead to new important instruments.

This essay is strongly concentrated on the treatment of huge amount of data,

recently called with the name of Big Data. It will first give an idea of the size and

the worth of these Data, then it will focus in deep on the Ubiquitous Computing

concept as a new channel for data gathering and his impact in the society and

for new business opportunities based on Customer Insight Data. Finally we will

conclude with particular importance and carefully understanding of all the related

privacy issues and proposed solutions.

3

2 The potential of Big Data

”Big data” (BD) refers to sets of data whose size is bigger than what typical data

storage tools can handle. The amount of digital data in our world has grown

exponentially in the short past years. Big Data is going to be the next frontier of

innovation, competition and profit.

To understand how big BD is and its value, some numerical examples have been

analyzed in the following sections. The source of these data is [US Bureau of Labor Statistics]

.

2.1 How much BD is big?

We can start looking at the following numbers in order to get the first idea regard-

ing the immensity of Big Data.

• $4 Billion pieces of content are shared everyday on Facebook.

• 235 Terabytes of data has been collected by the U.S. library of congress in

April 2011.

• 15 out of 17 sectors in the U.S. have more data per company than the U.S.

library of congress.

• 3.8 Petabytes on average the amount of data stored the securities and in-

vestment firm with under 1000 employees will have.

Big Data is huge and with the potential to expand even more in the future.

2.2 What is this data worth?

Simply knowing that all this data is out there is easily understandable, utilizing

this data to turn a profit is not trivial. Big Data has the potential to increase

profitability across all sectors.

In order to give a concrete idea, some numerical examples for the five sectors that

stand to benefit the most are given.

4

2.2.1 Health

Healthcare has lagged behind many other industries when it comes to improving

operational performance and adopting technology-enabled process improvements.

In ten years the implementation of big data in the health industry could capture

$300 billion annually and bring current healthcare expenditures by the U.S. gov-

ernment down 8 %. The healthcare expenditures as a percentage of the GDP was

17% in the 2010 and is expected to be 9% for the 2020.

The areas where the big data could be utilized are:

• Clinical, $165 billion. Transparency in clinical data and clinical decision

support.

• R&D, $108 billion. Research and development, clinical trial design, person-

alized medicine.

• Accounting, $47 billion. Advanced fraud detection, performance based drug

pricing.

• Public health, $9 billion. Public health surveillance and response systems.

• New business model, $5 billion. Aggregation of patient records, online plat-

forms and communities.

2.2.2 Government

Governments in many parts of the world need to increase their productivity through

digital means. Examining the public sector of the European Union we can see

where the utilization of BD can create value through e�ciency.

Utilizing BD, Europe’s public sector could reduce costs by 20% equivalent to 300

billion.

Potential returns investing in BD:

• Operational E�ciency Savings, $200 billion.

• Increase in tax collection, $110 billion.

• Reduction in fraud and error, $30 billion.

5

2.2.3 Retail

The use of technology and digital data in the retail industry has allowed for a

boost in profitability and productivity over the decade. The continued adoption

of BD has the potential increase of 60% in retailers operating margins.

2.2.4 Manufacturing

The manufacturing sector has adopted data in the use of information technology

and automation. Continued adoption of BD could lead to increased production

and a potential cut of 50% of the operating costs across all sectors.

2.2.5 Personal Location Technology

Personal location data volumes has increased rapidly with the adoption of mobile

phones. The potential for this data is far greater than any other because it is not

confined to a single sector but cuts across all industries.

The potential annual consumer surplus from global personal location data is $600

billion.

In overall, personal data location totals more than 1PB of data annually.

The potential worth of data would be:

• GPS, $500 billion. Navigation including smart routing based on real-time

tra�c.

• Marketing, $100 billion. Geo-targeted mobile advertising.

• Social, $57 billion. People tracking, location sharing and entertainment.

2.3 Exploiting the full potential

There are several issues that must be dealt with before all industry sectors can

access the full potential of this big data, the most critical ones are:

• Data policies.

• Data access.

• Technology integration.

6

• Lack of Talent.

Solving the issues related to the lack of full usage of BigData is not part of this

essay. In this paper I want just to point out the theoretical scenario of integrating

massively Ubiquitous Computing in our daily life environment and the potential

benefits and consequences into the society and BD market.

3 Ubiquitous Computing for Customer Insight

Data

The major part of the World’s computing are the embedded systems, or rather

systems designed to execute in real-time a few defined functions using sensors for

data input and output.

These devices represent an important role for data gathering, the major drivers

are: smart-phones, tablets, green technologies, eHealth, industrial applications

and so on.

Electronically generated data has increased of ten times in the last 5 years. The

prediction is to reach very soon over a Zetabyte of data generated. [Mark Little’s WebLog, 2012].

Ubiquitous Computing could be the new frontier for marketing opening new

user interaction technologies. In 1991, Blattberg, R.A. & Deighton, J. defined this

new marketing era as the ”age of addressability”.

Today’s UC systems make possible repeated and always more seamless inter-

actions between consumers and merchants of services and goods.

Network of sensors and computation embedded in the physical environments

allow to get real-time information regarding the user and the context.

Stream incoming data is often tagged by either location, either timestamp or

both.

For example the automatic identification of the user (Auto-ID) by means of

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) rather than Wireless communication lo-

calization systems such as Global Positioning System (GPS).

The convergence of location-based services, portable computing, haptic inter-

faces, cloud computing, search, and several other innovations will result in broadly

adoptable consumer technologies that e↵ectively give us new ways of perceiving

7

the world. They can generate new business models, services and possible products

making the Ubiquitous Computing a new source of valuable opportunities for the

upcoming years.

UC can give one big contribution in the reduction of the marginal cost of the

integration of the real and the virtual world enabling current information systems

to collect more detailed data.

Many organizations are simply sellers of their products. Being innovative in

the market means become a trusted advisor and o↵er appropriate services to your

customers at each stage of their journey.

Thanks to these modern technologies, companies can then gather massive

amounts of data about consumers, infer from behavior data trends, use their anal-

ysis and increase the profits.

Moreover aggregating and analyzing individual data can be provided person-

alized services, targeted o↵ers or dynamic pricing strategies.

A successful business should not just deliver the same products or services to

all its customers. In order to optimize it has to focus on specific strengths in the

market, such as strong vertical alignment, geographic locations or specific solution

and service collections, and mapping the target market to this. Being close and

aware of customer’s trend is much more e↵ective way to work than the traditional

one.

To understand how important is this investment just consider that the business

analytics services market, including advanced analytics and other related sources

is expected to continue to grow, estimated by IDC to exceed $48billion globally

by 2013. [IDC, 2009]

In this section I would like to give the idea of what is the real meaning of

insight data and the potential benefits that can come from. I will also mention a

simple Tesco case study to end up into the basic mechanism that allows sensors to

measure the World. Finally we will see the relation between the Big Data growth

and the deploying of UC technologies.

3.1 What is ”insight”

Huge database of customer’s data are available and coming from piece of research,

financial and planning data, market and competitor intelligence or feedback from

8

sales and customer service sta↵.

But, how much they are ”insight”?

”Insight” includes the classic areas, such as consumers identity, usages, preferences,

wishes, media exposure. It also includes more psychological areas: thoughts, feel-

ings, objectives, strategies and how these are combined in order to influence their

behavior.

Most are a↵ected and conditioned by several external factors, from the economy

and society to the brand marketing.

The traditional methods include customer’s feeling about the experience, and

whatever they have told to think about, through complaints or compliments, or

through requests for further information, or indeed whether they have unresolved

problems.

These data even if they are helpful, will never be enough precise and reliable

because of a lack of objectivity and constant monitoring.

Ubiquitous Computing techniques can provide immense value for better insight

data quality of the customers.

The following case study shows how important insight is and how a simple

limited use of UC (the Clubcard infrastructure) combined to market research can

result the key of profitable but still not fully exploited benefit.

3.1.1 Case study: Tesco Loyalty Card

Tesco is the UK’s largest retailer. It collects data from its loyalty card, Clubcard.

These data revealed that families with babies who shopped for childcare products

at Tesco spent much more than similar families who did not buy these products

from Tesco, although they bought similar amounts of other products.

Tesco’s market research instead revealed that non-baby product buyers trusted

the Tesco brand less for baby products than for the other products they bought.

The decision therefor was to modify its positioning towards mother and baby

customers, setting up the Tesco Baby Club. Tesco now sells as much in childcare

as its competitors.

The strategic decision was possible combining data from Tesco’s market re-

search and a simple example of ubiquitous computing, the Clubcard.

9

More info regarding the Tesco case study at [Tesco Case Study].

3.2 How sensors can measure the World

To give a rough idea of sensors in the practical life we might consider the Wii

tennis rackets rather than the smartphones automatic switching from landscape

to portrait mode. Sensors in general are created that are thousand times more

sensitive than this and can be utilized to have an incredible global impact.

Let’s consider the passive RFID tag used to track objects, every kind from the

clothes to the food, and provides real-time information regarding the object. This

is a very powerful technology even if provides only a relatively static information

since that the location is only updated when the tag is checked by a reader and

these kind of systems typically require manual inputs and operations.

A wireless sensor network provides much more awareness and the information

can be available at any time.

The sensor tag in addition to provide the location, can also tell a lot of infor-

mation regarding the environment and how it is behaving.

Take for example a smart home where interconnected motion and heat sensors

are all around. A computer system could understand when you leave a room and

turn o↵ the lights.

To extend the potentiality of the sensors in the globe, we need a system able

to capture the pulse of our surrounding environment. We may have sensors every-

where, in the public buses to count the seats available, lying alongside highways

to measure tra�c, in the houses and o�ces to watch how we are using the space.

Using billions of micro sensors we can know better about individuals but much

more important we can know the actions going on around us.

3.3 Big Data growth through Ubiquitous Computing

To understand how the Big Data are growing thanks to these new technologies,

we reported the answer of S. Gopalakrishnan, Co-Chairman at Infosys Limited, at

the question: ”Is Big Data a hype or is it a transformational change?”.

Any disruptive change comes with a period of hype. In the past,

IT was limited to Business back o�ce automation, scientific research

10

computation, personal productivity. With the advent of internet web,

IT connected Businesses, and now it is connecting People. In the fu-

ture, software is going to be everywhere - Mobile devices, Medical equip-

ment, Electric grids, Home Appliances, Vehicles etc. This is already

happening and will continue to grow in scale. The outcome of this is

an explosive growth of data with ubiquitous compute, storage and band-

width. It is becoming more important to make sense out of this data and

gain competitive advantage. This trend is reflected across Industries.

[S. Gopalakrishnan (Kris)]

One of the main ability of UC technology is to gather large amounts of data

from several kind of sources. It becomes obvious to think that UC will lead the

main role in the next generation of data gathering channels.

4 Related Personal Works

In order to give some practical examples of how the UC technology could be ap-

plied in real systems, I want to present some works I have contributed to and that

are strictly related to the UC and Insight Data concept focusing with particular

relevance on the sensors aspects and possible implications in the society-market

context.

4.1 Market Customers Insight Tracking

On march 2012, together with some my colleagues, we used the idea of a system

able to track customers inside a market for applying to a summer fellowship granted

by a Venture Capitalist.

To understand how it works, keep in mind the simple example of the smart

home that assists the user’s actions, for example the automatic turn on/o↵ of the

lights.

Imagine now that a similar scenario is repeated inside a super market and the

environment is surrounded by:

• Pedometer under the floor to track how many persons are walking in each

corridor.

11

• O↵-the-shelf sensors to track the remaining quantity and when a product is

removed from the shelf.

• RFID tag to every single object on sale.

• RFID readers for product informations and special promotions located every

3 meters to provide additional services to the user but also to track which

products the users are more interested on.

• Basket indoor position localized real-time.

Imagine also if the new generation of Loyalty Card are provided of RFID tag that

are utilized to grant, hence associate to the basket.

We have now the full picture of all the actions and movements of the customers

inside the market, a very deep insight tracking of their behavior during the daily

shopping.

4.2 UbiSalus

UbiSalus is an Home Healthcare Intelligent System.

The idea behind was to develop an intelligent system able to create new meth-

ods of interaction between the human and technology.

For this project we implemented an Electrocardiogram (EKG) and a breath

sensor and we simulated the presence of a weather station combining pressure and

temperature sensors.

All of these sensors were plugged on the WasaBoard [The Wasa Board Project].

The physical system generates a real-time streaming of data regarding the user’s

vital functions (heartbeat, breath rate...) together with environmental factors

(temperature, humidity, pressure...), and using a on-purpose developed Java frame-

work, jWasa, we were able to safely store the samples in a remote database for

further analysis and elaborations.

Then our software, UbiSalus, allows the patient to store his Daily Journal

through Personal Health Record (PHR) and apply some principle of Artificial In-

telligence to recognize events, associations and correlations among the data avail-

able in the database.

12

This is an example of new approach of using UC for generating huge amount of

data usable for healthcare monitoring and prevention. It could open a new way to

see the medical science, where the machines are not taking over the role of Doctors

but they help finding out what I single human brain is not able to do.

jWasa and UbiSalus are open sources projects developed as university course-

work, for more info see [jWasa and UbiSalus, 2012] .

5 Privacy Issues

In an Ubiquitous Computing environment, sensors are constantly generating data

about individuals and surrounding environment and immediately transmitting and

storing these data. Often this data can be very sensitive or confidential.

Moreover the growth of Big Data as business source raises the need of laws regu-

lation in order to protect users from hidden usages of their personal information.

5.1 Protection of Data and Privacy of Users in the Ubiq-

uitous Computing systems

In order to deploy an UC system, the issue of data and privacy protection has a

fundamental role.

Based on the case scenario we may find di↵erent security issues and requirements

that must be solved distinguishing the current situation. To give an idea of possible

scenarios, the most common ones are listed:

• Unfamiliar environment. Users can not trust the owners of the environment

and may require to have a trustable handling of their information by the

system administrator.

• Real-time data. Data generated and streamed at high rate does not allow to

have complex elaborations or permissions checking.

• Dynamic access rights. The access rights of the users may change with

respect to how the data is generated and in which context. The system

should grant the access of data at the same time it is generated only to the

users which are part of the responsible team.

13

• Distributed data. Information are typically decentralized and in absence of a

single point of access it could be hard to guarantee the same level of security.

• Data sharing. Often the data are shared among a team and the pretending

users must be legitimated before they are able to access, edit or generate

data.

For the data generated by the user is trivial to guarantee security using en-

cryption keys and only transmitting the encrypted versions. In the UC systems,

the data are generated by the infrastructure itself and the users have to trust the

system since that it is the only one which can execute all the security operations.

Moreover the protection of data is not the only main issue. Data protection

is shaped by privacy considerations. It is important to follow all the privacy

constraints in order to guarantee security and reliability of the UC systems.

Marc Langheinrich, in [Langheinrich, 2011], defined six principles for designing

privacy-aware ubiquitous systems:

1. Notice: users should always be aware of what data is being collected.

2. Choice and Consent: users should be able to choose whether it is used.

3. Anonymity, Pseudonymity: should apply when identity is not needed.

4. Meeting Expectations: systems should mimic real-world norms.

5. Security: di↵erent amounts of protection depending on the situation.

6. Access and Recourse: users should have access to data about them.

All Langheinrich’s principles are a must to follow for any UC system in order

to be trustable and reliable from the users point of view.

5.2 Big Data Privacy Invasion

Regardless of the data security and the respect of privacy policies in the UC

systems, once collected this huge amount of data it is crucial to know how they

will be used.

Big Data is a worthy opportunity but need the upright balance between the

right to knowledge and the right of the individuals.

14

”People give out their data often without thinking about it. They

have no idea that it will be sold to third parties.”

said Viviane Reding, European commission vice-president.

People voluntarily populate social databases with valuable personal information

that standing to the commercial property can then be sold to third parties with

di↵erent privacy policy.

The web theorist Danah Boyd, during the WWW conference in 2010, a�rmed

that ”People seek privacy so that they can make themselves vulnerable in order to

gain something: personal support, knowledge, friendship”.

I truly agree with him. The majority of Internet users prefer to get services,

as Google and Facebook provide, in exchange for personal information.

It comes easy at this point to understand why a lot of people do not care about

data protection and privacy policy, let alone for automatically captured data in

UC environments.

In this paper I want to argue that not considering the privacy issue is a big

lack of responsibility and immaturity by the users.

In any case it should be also a responsibility of the governments to protect

careless users.

In the following paragraphs I am marking two privacy regulations: the Obama’s

proposal to protect the privacy of US consumers and the European directive of

”the right to be forgotten” and the recent proposed reform.

5.2.1 US blueprint for a ”Privacy Bill of Rights”

On February 2012, Obama Administration unveiled a blueprint as a Consumer

Privacy Bill of Rights [Bills of Rights blueprint] with the goal of improve privacy

protection and ensure Internet as instrument of innovation and economic growth.

This blueprint will give users more control over the usages of their personal

information on Internet and will help companies getting consumer trust.

”American consumers can’t wait any longer for clear rules of the

road that ensure their personal information is safe online. As the Inter-

net evolves, consumer trust is essential for the continued growth of the

digital economy. That’s why an online privacy Bill of Rights is so im-

portant. For businesses to succeed online, consumers must feel secure.

15

By following this blueprint, companies, consumer advocates and poli-

cymakers can help protect consumers and ensure the Internet remains

a platform for innovation and economic growth.”

said Mr. Obama.

This Bill of Rights provides a baseline of privacy rights:

• Individual Control. Consumers have a the right to control over what data

organizations collect from them and their future usage.

• Transparency. Consumers have a right to get information regarding privacy

and security practices in a clear and understandable way.

• Respect for Context. Consumers have a right to expect that organizations

collect, use and disclose personal data in the same context in which the

consumers provided these.

• Security. Consumers have a right to secure and responsible handling their

personal data.

• Access and Accuracy: Consumers have a right to access and correct their

data in an appropriate manner to the sensitivity and the consequences of

inaccurate data.

• Focused Collection. Consumers have a right to restrict the personal data

that companies conserve.

• Accountability. Consumers have a right to pretend their personal data are

handled respecting the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.

Finally the US government is stepping forward to this important challenge of

privacy protection so that modern technologies can grow rapidly with the contri-

bution of consumers that this time will have a greater control over their personal

data.

Of course this Bill of Rights is only a first step towards a more concrete and

executive plan for the institutions and companies.

Anyway what done so far is very encouraging and can trigger a global con-

sciousness that concrete actions must be taken for this delicate topic.

16

5.2.2 EU directive and ”right to be forgotten”

Whilst the US privacy regulations are still work in progress, In the EU some privacy

rights appeared already in the 1995 data protection directive [EU Data Protection directive].

The most relevant point of this directive is that by law that the property of data

belongs to the individual and must be deleted from the systems at any requested

time.

This is why this rule has been campaigned by Reding with the name of ”right

to be forgotten”.

The main motivation of this law is to not break the business ecosystem for foreign

investors avoiding to make the Europe a world center of strict privacy policies.

EU is aiming to encourage companies to inform their users that their privacy

policy adhere to the guidelines in the way people can serenely continue to publish

their information and ask for removal at any time.

Personally I would really argue against this mechanism for two main reasons:

lack of responsibility by the users and a technical expedient through data aggre-

gation.

Regarding the first one, if the users can make any kind of public declaration

and then be able to step back and erase what previously said is a lack of account-

ability. People should take responsibility of their actions and publishing personal

information is one of them. Letting people adding and removing public informa-

tion based on their convenience could lead Internet to become a wrapper of tons

of scarce quality information absolutely not trustable and reliable.

The second point is that for companies working on Big Data often they are

not interested on the single user’s behavior but rather more on the average trend.

In this last case companies can easily cheat the rule aggregating data on real time

and deleting the individual information right after that.

Acting in this way the individual personal information are apparently never

retained and after the aggregation no any user can pretend to be the owner of

them.

Fortunately on the 25th January 2012, the European Commission proposed a

reform [EU directive reform, Brussels 2012] of the current directive with the goal of

update and moderns these principles in order to guarantee future enforced privacy

rights.

17

The key changes in the reform include:

• A single framework of rules valid across all the EU removing unnecessary

administrative requirements.

• Increased responsibility and accountability for companies processing personal

data.

• Organizations will only deal with a single ”national data protection author-

ity” in the european country where they are headquartered.

• Right of the consumers to access and easily transfer their personal data from

one service provider to another one.

• General data protection principles and rules for police and judicial coopera-

tion in criminal matters.

And of course is kept the now well known ”right to be forgotten” rule.

We can see again that the European Commission is taking an important con-

sideration regarding the future of the privacy and consumer confidence in online

services. This is a relevant step towards the basis of growth and innovation in

Europe.

6 Conclusion

I conclude this paper summarizing the focal points of this argumentation.

I want to remark that some scenarios used in this paper are just examples with

the main goal of transmitting the potential power of the UC technologies when

properly used.

Give statistics or concrete numbers regarding how much UC is powerful and

worthy is not that easy. This is a technology that is not yet widespread as it

should be and how I expect it will be in the upcoming years.

What I can a�rm with certainty is that BigData has a huge market and may

be the key for the next generation of innovation and business opportunities.

What we can observe right now are already very powerful systems adopting

current technologies.

18

The purpose of the paper was to project the reader in a World surrounded

by Ubiquitous Computing technologies able to collect data captured by sensors

everyday, at every time and in every daily environment.

It is important then to observe that the Big Data growth is strictly related to

a more massive deployment of UC technologies.

Disposing always of many and highly detailed insight data about consumers

and surrounding environment generates a global benefit for every party.

From one side, the companies marketing team can take advantage of an im-

measurable benefit for their business strategies. Yet, the users can benefit from

the enhanced services that then companies can provided to them.

Hence, the UC leads one of the main role in the future of our networked society.

It is essential to consider also that these new technologies arose serious privacy

issues.

In order to render all the technologies described so far socially and ethically

accepted, we need important diligence from three main parties: the UC system

producers, the governments and the people inhabiting this World.

The UC system producers have to make their systems trustable respecting the

six Langheinrich’s principles described previously.

The governments have to provide regulations to protect the privacy of the users,

the recent US and Europe discussions are an example of it. Important is that it

does not take too long to get approved and that those rules are continuously

updated since that the environment we are living in is pretty dynamic and the

issues of today may not be the same in a couple of years.

Finally, we all together should be more conscientious, aware and prevented of

what kind of personal information we are going to share in the public domains.

We are the only ones that can share the universal sense of what is and what is not

private.

Moderating the privacy policies by all the parties mentioned so far and with the

willingness of the IT majors of the sector we can exploit such powerful instruments

as Ubiquitous Computing technology and Big Data worth to create a greater,

enhanced society.

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