A privacy-preserving personal sensor data ecosystem

Despite the ubiquity of passively-collected sensor data (primarily attained via smartphones), there does not currently exist a comprehensive system for authorizing the collection of such data, collecting, storing, analyzing, and visualizing it in a manner that preserves the privacy of the user generating the data. This thesis shows the design and implementation of such a system, named openPDS, from both the client and server perspectives. Two server-side components are implemented: a centralized registry server for authentication and authorization of all entities in the system, and a distributed Personal Data Store that allows analysis to be run against the stored sensor data and aggregated across multiple Personal Data Stores in a privacy-preserving fashion. The client, implemented for the Android mobile phone operating system, makes use of the Funf Open Sensing framework to collect data and adds the ability for users to authenticate against the registry server, authorize third-party applications to analyze data once it reaches their Personal Data Store, and finally, visualize the result of such analysis within a mobile phone or web browser. A number of example quantified-self and social applications are built on top of this framework to demonstrate feasibility of the system from both development and user perspectives.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Sweatt, Brian M. (Brian Michael)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alex "Sandy" Pentland.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/91875

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/91875