Abstract

In this paper we propose a novel architecture and approach to provide accountability for Web communities that require a high-level of privacy. A two-layered privacy protection architecture is proposed, that supports (i) registration of participants and enforcement of community rules, called internal accountability, and (ii) rule-based interaction with real world organizations, called external accountability. Our security protocols build upon community-based trust and limit the exposure of private data on trusted third parties.

The two-layered architecture protects the mappings between real users and their virtual identities, and among the virtual users, while guaranteeing internal and external accountability. We target Web communities that are dynamic and self-organizing, i.e. roles and contributions of participants may change over time. The proposed concepts and protocols are implemented in our SyllabNet project that supports anonymous course evaluations by university students.

Keywords: Accountability; Anonymity; Privacy; Trust; Self-organizing

Article Outline

1. Introduction

2. Problem domain

2.1. A2SOC application examples

2.2. A2SOC concepts

2.3. Discussion of the problem domain

3. Building the A2SOC model

3.1. Considerations on anonymity in self-organizing community

3.2. Accountable Anonymity Model

3.3. Providing accountability

3.4. The need for two TTPs

4. A2SOC Model

4.1. Notations for the model

4.2. Data structures

4.3. Protocols

4.4. Assurance of security protocols

5. A testbed for A2SOC principles

5.1. Motivation for SyllabNet

5.2. SyllabNet architecture

5.3. Discussion of ITTC in SyllabNet

6. Related works and discussion

6.1. The core of the problem

6.2. General A2SOCs

7. Conclusions

Acknowledgements

Appendix A. The A2SOC protocols

References