ABSTRACT
In today’s information society, users have lost effective control over their personal spheres. Emerging pervasive computing technologies, where individuals are usually unaware of a constant data collection and processing in their surroundings, will even heighten this problem. It is, however critical, to our society and to democracy to retain and maintain an individual’s autonomy and, thus, to protect privacy and particularly the individual’s right to informational self-determination. Powerful tools for technically enforcing user control and informational self-determination as well as the privacy principle of data minimization can be provided by privacy-enhancing identity management systems, as currently developed within the European Union 6th Framework Program (EU FP6) integrated project PRIME (Privacy and Identity Management for Europe).
