Trust-Based Data Disclosure in Sensor Networks

In sensor networks, privacy can be addressed in different levels of the network stack and at different points of the information flow. This paper presents an application level scheme for controlling information disclosure at the points of data capture. The scheme includes a trust model for facilitating in-network privacy decisions. The trust model exploits the pre-deployment knowledge on the network topology and the information flows, and combines aspects from alternative approaches on trust establishment on common evaluation metrics, in order to allow for flexibility in the trust establishment process. The trust assigned to each data requestor is used to determine if the data or only a sample of it will be disclosed, or if the request will be rejected. The scheme allows the use of various mechanisms, including negative surveys, for publishing samples of data to partially trusted requestors. The proposed scheme has been validated through simulation. The results and analysis demonstrate its effectiveness in managing trust relationships and data disclosure operations.