Privacy and/or Trust?

Abstract

The challenges and opportunities associated with the terms trust privacy polarize society for decades now. Research subsumes a plethora of security goals and research streams under these terms. That broad meaning ultimately leads to different understandings of the relation between privacy and trust itself: sometimes privacy and trust are treated as antagonists, marking opposite points of the very same dimension. Sometimes privacy and trust are considered independent dimensions, with good solutions achieving both. This talk will cover my Ph.D. work about anonymous/unlinkable publish-subscribe followed by a look at composable privacy. Next, the talk will take a closer look at the area of trust, specifically computational trust, and how it can support application scenarios. Finally, the talk will cover research conducted within the DFG RTG -Privacy and Trust for Mobile Users-, where the counterplay and synergies of privacy and trust are reflected in the context of our mobile/smartphone-driven world. That will lead to the final question: can we entrust our (mobile) devices to protect our privacy?