Formal Analysis of Privacy Requirements Specifications for Multi-Tier Applications
Abstract
Companies require data from multiple sources to develop new information systems, such as social networking, e-commerce, and location-based services. These systems rely on complex, multi-stakeholder data supply chains to deliver value. These data supply chains have complex privacy requirements. Privacy policies affecting multiple stakeholders (e.g., user, developer, company, government) regulate the collection, use, and sharing of data over multiple jurisdictions (e.g., California, United States, Europe). Increasingly, regulators expect companies to ensure consistency between company privacy policies and company data practices. To address this problem, we propose a methodology to map policy requirements in natural language to a formal representation in Description Logic. Using the formal representation, we reason about conflicting requirements within a single policy and among multiple policies in a data supply chain. Further, we enable tracing data flows within the supply chain. We derive our methodology from an exploratory case study of the Facebook platform policy. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach in an evaluation involving Facebook, Zynga, and AOL Advertising policies. Our results identify three conflicts that exist between Facebook and Zynga policies, and one conflict that exists within the AOL Advertising policy.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 30, 2013
- Accession Number
- ADA593464
Entities
People
- Ashwini Rao
- Travis D. Breaux
Organizations
- Carnegie Mellon University