Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) is a technology of automatic object identification. A typical RFID system consists of multiple tags and readers, and an infrastructure for handling the high volume of data. The tag is a small device that can be attached to an object, such as a person or a product, for the purpose of unique identification. The reader is an instrument, positioned in a strategic location, that communicates with the RFID tag. It broadcasts a radio signal to the tag, which then transmits its information back to the reader. Streams of RFID data are then stored in a database for analysis. Although RFID would be useful in a broad spectrum of applications, such as supply chain management, e-passports, and patient care and management, the uniquely identifiable tags pose a threat to privacy by tracking a person's movements or profiling an individual. Some privacy advocates have even labeled RFID as the "worst thing that ever happened to consumer privacy." Clearly, the privacy concern is an obstacle to the acceptance of RFID technology. This research program overcomes the privacy obstacle in RFID information systems and develops a series of anonymization methods to transform the underlying RFID data into a version that hides sensitive information, yet keeps it useful for data analysis. RFID data poses new challenges to traditional database, data mining, and privacy-preserving technologies due to its unique characteristics: it is time-dependent, location-dependent, and is generated in large volumes of stream data. Previous works in privacy-preserving RFID technology mainly focused on the hardware and communication protocol layers instead of the database layer, in which a large amount of data actually resides. The research results will contribute to the core data mining and privacy preservation domains, as well as the industries that employ RFID technology, sensor networks, and location-based services. The proposed research will result in a secure environment for employing RFID technology without sacrificing its information usefulness.