Accountability and deterrence in online life

Abstract

The standard technical approach to privacy and security in online life is preventive: Before someone can access confidential data or take any other action that implicates privacy or security, he should be required to prove that he is authorized to do so. As the scale and complexity of online activity has grown, it has become apparent that the preventive approach is inadequate; thus, a growing set of information-security researchers has embraced greater reliance on accountability mechanisms to complement preventive measures. Despite widespread agreement that "accountability" is important in online life, the term has no standard definition. We make three contributions to the study of accountability: (1) We flesh out with realistic examples our claim that a purely preventive approach to security is inadequate; (2) We present, compare, and contrast some existing formal frameworks for accountability; (3) We explore the question of whether "deterrence" may be a better general term in this context than "accountability."

Towards a formal model of accountability

“…This very general use of the word "accountability" may create barriers to adoption, because the word connotes "answerability" and "standing up to be counted" in ways that suggest formal adjudication and the inability to act anonymously while remaining accountable. We explore these terminological issues more fully in a recent paper with Hendler and Weitzner [7]. Here, we stress that the value of our formal framework does not depend on the use of the word "accountability."…”

Managing and sharing health data through Information Accountability protocols

“…Misuse refers to the unauthorised access, use, modification, or disclosure of information, or other use of information that is not for the purpose for which the information was provided [10,11]. Much like in the offline world we live in, it is expected that when users are aware of the accountability measures, they would not engage in inappropriate activities [12]. As a result, AeH systems allow information to be made available to legitimate users more openly and effectively without threatening patients' information privacy.…”

Security Analysis of Accountable Anonymity in Dissent

“…In general, they may offer accountability either for protocol violations or for undesirable content or behavior (Feigenbaum, Hendler, Jaggard, Weitzner, and Wright 2011). DISSENT and other protocols based on DC-nets (Waidner and Pfitzmann 1989a;Golle and Juels 2004), and verifiable shuffles (Neff 2003;Khazaei, Moran, and Wikström 2012;Bayer and Groth 2012) aim to hold users accountable for protocol violations.…”