Stone Rice Big dot Net

“Much real world data about service systems often has a proprietary nature and security concerns associated with it. The confidential feature of the data may require novel methods of archiving and releasing. Unlike many other subjects, service science researchers must focus their efforts on establishing appropriate legal, social, and economic conventions around data sharing for specific purposes.” (IfM and IBM 2008, p. 13)

“The service-dominant logic advocates that service (singular) involves value-cocreation interactions as service systems create, propose and realise value propositions. The interactions may include things, actions, information and other resources. Value propositions are built on the notion of asset sharing, information sharing, work sharing (actions), risk sharing as well as other types of sharing that can create value in customer-provider interactions.” (IfM and IBM 2008, p. 17)

“The need for more business-to-business service research, including global logistics and lean operations is growing. The trend toward self-service technologies that provision service locally, but are often deployed and maintained by globally integrated enterprises, will drive demand for in-the-field maintenance and security service capabilities.” (IfM and IBM 2008, p. 26)

Source: University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), and International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). 2008. “Succeeding through Service Innovation: A Service Perspective for Education, Research, Business and Government,” University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing, Cambridge, UK.

Lief gestern über den heise-ticker: US-Ärztevereinigung empfiehlt implantierbare RFID-Chips.

Wie macht man den Menschen die Überwachung schmackhaft?

Zunächst einmal über die Sicherheitsschiene. Lasst Euch einen Chip einpflanzen und alles wird viel sicherer.

Dann hatten wir ja noch die Bequemlichkeitsschiene. Ermögliche den Eintritt zu einem Club, gib ein paar Goodies dazu und die Leute lassen sich reihenweise einen RFID-Chip unter die Haut schieben.

Die dritte Schiene sind emotionale Themen: medizinische Notfälle, Vermeidung von Ärztefehlern, etc.

RFID tags may promote the timely identification of patients and expedite access to their medical information. As a result, these devices can improve the continuity and coordination of care with resulting reduction in adverse drug events and other medical errors. (Quelle AMA. Achtung Word-Doc)

Die Ärzte stehen der Sache jedoch (zum Glück) kritisch gegenüber:

However, if objective evidence demonstrates negative consequences that outweigh the benefits in relation to health care, the medical profession will bear an important responsibility to oppose the use of RFID labeling in humans. (Quelle: gleiches Dokument)

Ein implantierter Chip hätte den Vorteil, dass man sein medizinischen Daten immer am Mensch hat. Im Notfall - man ist zum Beispiel bewusstlos - kann ein Arzt dann alle Daten auslesen. Gegenüber der berühmten eGK hat der Chip den Vorteil, dass nicht die Karte meines Sohnes, welche ich gerade zufällig bei mir trage, mit meiner verwechselt werden kann.

Wenn aber jeder Arzt an die Daten kommen können muss, benötigt man einen Generalschlüssel (also spezielle Geräte - es muss ja ohne mein Zutun funktionieren!). Damit ist ja aber einer Überwachung Tür und Tor geöffnet - ein Gerät im Krankenhaus gestohlen und schon kann der Dieb die Gesundheitsdaten seiner Nachbarn auslesen.

Wie gut, dass ich Angst vor Nadeln hab…

The Economist writes about a new way of securing data in databases based on philosophy:

In the 1940s a philosopher called Carl Hempel showed that by manipulating the logical statement all ravens are black you could derive the equivalent all non-black objects are non-ravens. Such topsyturvy transformations might seem reason enough to keep philosophers locked up safely on university campuses, where they cannot do too much damage. (The Economist 2006 8493(380) p. 72)

The underlying principle is similar to the immune system, where lymphocytes (e.g. T-cells) do not have information about any potentially harmful intruders, i.e. all their information refer to body cells. By negating their information base, everything they do not know is a potential threat and thus will be attacked. Hence, lymphocytes do not need information about virusses, bacteria, etc.

Transferring this into the world of computers results in negative databases, that store everything but the actual information. Such negative databases are suitable for protecting privacy, e.g. by just storing the negative information of credit card information. For instance it is possible to query the database for the information about one entry (”Give me the credit card information of person X”). However, it is not possible to process Select *-statements (”Give me all credit card information of your German customers”) (Esponda et al. 2004).

Practically, this means that for instance surveys can use the information stored in such negative databases and derive statistical information of it and do not conflict with privacy concerns of the individuals, whose date is stored in the database (Esponda 2005).

Another application could be data exchange through web services. The big security and privacy problem of web services is that I have to hand out date to some probably unknown entity. So basically web services rely on the hope, that my business partner does not publish my information to the world or sell it to competitors (There is an interesting interview with Withfield Diffie on this topic here). Wouldn’t it be possible to design negative statements of information that I want to be processed by somebody else, that allows the external entity to process it and return a meaningful result without actually knowing the exact nature of the result? Obviously it would not work on any data, e.g. you definitely need to present shipping information to UPS to get the package delivered.

The analogy with the human immune system results in adopting its weaknesses. Failures in knowing what self is can do great damages. Allergic reactions then seem to be the result of the wrong negative information.

References

(Esponda et al 2004) F. Esponda, E.S. Ackley, S. Forrest and P. Helman. On-line Negative Databases. Third International Conference on Artificial Immune Systems (ICARIS 2004) Proceedings, pp.175-188, September 2004. 

[Esponda 2005) Esponda, F. Negative representations of information. University of New Mexico Dissertation, 2005.