Team for Research in
Ubiquitous Secure Technology

Citation
Arvind Narayanan, Vincent Toubiana, Solon Barocas, Helen Nissenbaum, Dan Boneh. "A Critical Look at Decentralized Personal Data Architectures". CoRR, February, 2012.

Abstract
While the Internet was conceived as a decentralized network, the most widely used web applications today tend toward centralization. Control increasingly rests with centralized service providers who, as a consequence, have also amassed unprecedented amounts of data about the behaviors and personalities of individuals. Developers, regulators, and consumer advocates have looked to alternative decentralized architectures as the natural response to threats posed by these centralized services. The result has been a great variety of solutions that include personal data stores (PDS), infomediaries, Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) systems, and federated and distributed social networks. And yet, for all these efforts, decentralized personal data architectures have seen little adoption.

This position paper attempts to account for these failures, challenging the accepted wisdom in the web community on the feasibility and desirability of these approaches. We start with a historical discussion of the development of various categories of decentralized personal data architectures. Then we survey the main ideas to illustrate the common themes among these efforts. We tease apart the design characteristics of these systems from the social values that they (are intended to) promote. We use this understanding to point out numerous drawbacks of the decentralization paradigm, some inherent and others incidental. We end with recommendations for designers of these systems for working towards goals that are achievable, but perhaps more limited in scope and ambition.

Electronic downloads

• http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.4503

• HTML

  Arvind Narayanan, Vincent Toubiana, Solon Barocas, Helen
  Nissenbaum, Dan Boneh. <a
  href="http://www.truststc.org/pubs/899.html" >A
  Critical Look at Decentralized Personal Data
  Architectures</a>, CoRR, February, 2012.

• Plain text

  Arvind Narayanan, Vincent Toubiana, Solon Barocas, Helen
  Nissenbaum, Dan Boneh. "A Critical Look at
  Decentralized Personal Data Architectures". CoRR,
  February, 2012.

• BibTeX

  @inproceedings{NarayananToubianaBarocasNissenbaumBoneh12_CriticalLookAtDecentralizedPersonalDataArchitectures,
      author = {Arvind Narayanan and Vincent Toubiana and Solon
                Barocas and Helen Nissenbaum and Dan Boneh},
      title = {A Critical Look at Decentralized Personal Data
                Architectures},
      booktitle = {CoRR},
      month = {February},
      year = {2012},
      abstract = {While the Internet was conceived as a
                decentralized network, the most widely used web
                applications today tend toward centralization.
                Control increasingly rests with centralized
                service providers who, as a consequence, have also
                amassed unprecedented amounts of data about the
                behaviors and personalities of individuals.
                Developers, regulators, and consumer advocates
                have looked to alternative decentralized
                architectures as the natural response to threats
                posed by these centralized services. The result
                has been a great variety of solutions that include
                personal data stores (PDS), infomediaries, Vendor
                Relationship Management (VRM) systems, and
                federated and distributed social networks. And
                yet, for all these efforts, decentralized personal
                data architectures have seen little adoption. <p>
                This position paper attempts to account for these
                failures, challenging the accepted wisdom in the
                web community on the feasibility and desirability
                of these approaches. We start with a historical
                discussion of the development of various
                categories of decentralized personal data
                architectures. Then we survey the main ideas to
                illustrate the common themes among these efforts.
                We tease apart the design characteristics of these
                systems from the social values that they (are
                intended to) promote. We use this understanding to
                point out numerous drawbacks of the
                decentralization paradigm, some inherent and
                others incidental. We end with recommendations for
                designers of these systems for working towards
                goals that are achievable, but perhaps more
                limited in scope and ambition. },
      URL = {http://www.truststc.org/pubs/899.html}
  }
  

Posted by Mary Stewart on 4 Apr 2012.
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