Building future generation service-oriented information broker networks

Future generation networks target collecting intelligence from multiple sources based on end-users' data and their social interaction in order to draw useful conclusions on enabling users to execute their rights to online privacy. These networks form a rising class of service-oriented broker platforms. Designers and providers of such network platforms during the design and development of their systems focus primarily on technical specifications and issues. However, given the importance and richness of user information collected, they should already at the design phase take into account legal and ethical requirements. Failure to do so, may result in privacy violations, which may, in turn, affect the success of the network due to increasing awareness with respect to users’ privacy and security concerns, and may incur future costs. In this paper, we show how the di.me system balanced technical and legal requirementsthroughboth its design and implementation, while building a decentralized social networking platform. We report on our advances and experiences through a prototypical technology realizing such a platform, analyze the legal implications within the EU legal framework, and provide recommendations and conclusions for user-friendly serviceoriented broker platforms. Keywords—di.me; online privacy; social media; software design; legal and ethical issues; broker platform; context-aware web services; user data