Privacy and Personalised Data Analytics: Thinking Inside the Box

ABSTRACT:

Today's Internet ecosystem and the digital economy relies on bulk collection of the data about us, data generated by us, and data around us. An increasing variety of data sources, from social media to IoT devices, are aggressively queried and integrated into blackbox profiling and analytics algorithms. While some of the derived inferences may be beneficial to the user, the adopted approach is jeopardising the individuals' privacy and security, while sacrificing resources such as their bandwidth and energy.

In this talk, I present a number of examples where a user-centred approach can be utilised by cyber physical systems to provide privacy-preserving analytics, while preventing excessive resource usage and personal information leakage. I will then demonstrate the Databox system; an open source, privacy-aware personal data platform which enables a scalable, collaborative and transparent ecosystem for household and IoT data analytics, actuation, and Human-Data Interaction.

BIODATA:

Hamed is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Digital Media at EECS School, Queen Mary University of London. His research interests are in Networked Systems, Privacy, Security, and IoT. He enjoys designing and building systems that enable better use of our digital footprint, while respecting users' privacy. He is also broadly interested in sensing applications and Human-Data Interaction. He is currently serving as the Information Services Director for the ACM SIGCOMM Executive Committee.

He studied for BEng/MSc/PhD at University College London and the University of Cambridge. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Germany, and a postdoctoral research fellow at Department of Pharmacology, University of Cambridge and The Royal Veterinary College, University of London. He has spent time working and collaborating with Intel Research, Microsoft Research, AT&T Research, Telefonica, and Sony Europe. When not in the office, he prefers to be on a ski slope or in a kayak.