Eugenia Politou

• PhD Computer Science
• University of Piraeus

The fast pace of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies’ evolution makes people vulnerable to financial fraud and provides a relatively straightforward monetisation mechanism for cybercriminals, in particular ransomware groups which exploit crypto’s pseudo-anonymity properties. At the same time, regulatory efforts for addressing crimes related...

The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is employed extensively nowadays by many blockchain projects to store personal data off-chain in order to comply with the Right to be Forgotten (RtbF) provision of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Nevertheless, upon an erasure request under the RtbF, the onus of removing the actual personal inform...

In the previous chapter we analysed the impact of implementing the GDPR, and in particular the RtbF, in established IT environments and business processes. However, two advanced technological trends of our times used increasingly nowadays for storing and processing personal data, have been emerged in parallel and independently of the GDPR: the ubiq...

The GDPR, being a legal document, follows a technology-agnostic approach so as not to bind the provisions of the law with current trends and state-of-the-art technologies in computer science and information technology. Yet, the technical challenges of aligning modern systems and processes with the GDPR provisions, and mainly with the Right to be Fo...

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 at the late 2019 has brought enormous hurdles globally to our everyday lives and to our society. In order to mitigate the impact of the pandemic and to control the dissemination of the coronavirus, governments worldwide have taken extreme surveillance measures which most of the times invade to individuals’ privacy an...

Privacy in blockchains is rather complicated as it contradicts with some highly praised properties of blockchain such as immutability. Immutability is considered a cornerstone of blockchains’ security and, therefore, an indisputable property according to which transactional blockchain data cannot be edited nor deleted. However, blockchain’s immutab...

Privacy nowadays is commonly discussed in the context of data protection. While privacy and data protection are not synonymous, they overlap to a great extent. In consequence, privacy —besides data protection—is always within the scope of contemporary data protection legislations. As both terms derive from well established fundamental human rights...

Mobile sensing applications exploit big data to measure and assess human-behavioural modelling. However, big data profiling and automated decision practices, albeit powerful and pioneering, they are also highly unregulated and thereby unfair and intrusive. Their risk to privacy has been indeed identified as one of the biggest challenges faced by mo...

The enforcement of the GDPR on the 25th of May 2018 has caused prolonged controversy due to the severe impact on the processing of personal data under this new regulation. Of its provisions, the most radical and controversial one is the “Right to be Forgotten” (RtbF). In simple terms, the RtbF—along with the provisions for withdrawing consent—allow...

Modern technological advancements such as mobile ubiquitous computing and decentralized p2p networks rely on the collection, processing and sharing of vast amount of personal information which—when combined with big data and machine learning techniques—pose significant challenges to the rights of privacy and data protection. The GDPR, seeking to re...

The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is employed extensively nowadays by many blockchain projects to store personal data off-chain to comply with the Right to be Forgotten (RtbF) requirement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the new regulatory regime for personal data protection in the EU. In such a way, when a request for content...

The widespread adoption of the new generation of decentralised architectures, leveraged by blockchain and decentralised file storage (DFS) systems, enables a myriad of new applications and opportunities. Nevertheless, their remarkable features, namely auditability, availability and, among all, immutability, do not come without a cost. In this artic...

Blockchain's evolution during the past decade is astonishing: from bitcoin to over 2.000 altcoins, and from decentralised electronic payments to transactions programmable by smart contracts and complex tokens governed by decentralised organisations. While the new generation of blockchain applications is still evolving, blockchain's technical charac...

Blockchain's evolution during the past decade is astonishing: from bitcoin to over 2.000 altcoins, and from decentralised electronic payments to transactions programmable by smart contracts and complex tokens governed by decentralised organisations. While the new generation of blockchain applications is still evolving, blockchain's technical charac...

Big data and machine learning algorithms have paved the way towards the bulk accumulation of tax and financial data which are exploited to either provide novel financial services to consumers or to augment authorities with automated conformance checks. In this regard, the international and EU policies toward collecting and exchanging a large amount...

The recent enforcement of the GDPR has put extra burdens to data controllers operating within the EU. Beyond other challenges, the exercise of the Right to be Forgotten by individuals who request erasure of their personal information has also become a thorny issue when applied to backups and archives. In this paper, we discuss the GDPR forgetting r...

Upon the GDPR's application on 25 May 2018 across the European Union, new legal requirements for the protection of personal data will be enforced for data controllers operating within the EU territory. While the principles encompassed by the GDPR were mostly welcomed, two of them; namely the right to withdraw consent and the right to be forgotten,...

Recent advances in hardware and telecommunications have enabled the development of low cost mobile devices equipped with a variety of sensors. As a result, new functionalities, empowered by emerging mobile platforms, allow millions of applications to take advantage of vast amounts of data. Following this trend, mobile health applications collect us...

Upon the General Data Protection Regulation’s (GDPR) application on 25 May 2018 across the European Union, new legal requirements for the protection of personal data will be enforced for data controllers operating within the EU territory. While the principles encompassed by the GDPR were mostly welcomed, two of them, namely the right to withdraw co...

The spontaneous recognition of emotional states and personality traits of individuals has been puzzling researchers for years whereas pertinent studies demonstrating the progress in the field, despite their diversity, are still encouraging. This work surveys the most well-known research studies and the state-of-the-art on affect recognition domain...

The principle aim of the e-DiaMoND project is to develop a prototype Grid infrastructure to support the needs of the breast care community. The prototype system is but one major deliverable of the project; the other is a blueprint document that describes how a system such as e-DiaMoND might be deployed throughout the United Kingdom to support the N...

In this paper we describe an approach to the facilitation of system-wide security that enables fine-grained access control within systems in which third party web services are deployed. The primary motivation for the work comes from the authors’ research into the development of grid-enabled healthcare systems (or health grids). Indeed, we would arg...

The primary focus of the UK e-Science Programme is the development of software architectures, middleware and applications to support the end-user scientific community in the undertaking of large-scale research. A significant subset of e-Science projects is concerned with the healthcare domain: as well as satisfying the needs of the end users, such...

Breakthroughs in medical informatics have yielded a wealth of data across all aspects of patient care. One of the fundamental goals of e-Science should be facilitate the appropriate use of such data to improve patient care: both in the short-term and the long-term. Developments in Grid technology have brought about the promise of such data being us...

It is well understood that a conflict between functionality and confidentiality exists within the context of medical research databases: while patients' rights must be preserved, restricting access to data can reduce the value of the data that is available to the researcher. As such, limiting access so that confidentiality is preserved without redu...

OGSA-DAI is a reference implementation of the OGSA Data Access and Integration services that facilitates homogeneous access to a wide range of databases, with this access being independent of the underlying database schemas and database management systems. In this paper we propose a secure wrapper for OGSA-DAI to allow an existing OGSA-DAI install...

The principal aim of the eDiaMoND project is to develop a prototype Grid infrastructure to support the needs of the breast care community. The prototype system is but one major deliverable of the project; the other is a blueprint document that describes how a system such as eDiaMoND might be deployed throughout the United Kingdom to support the NHS...

In this paper we discuss the use of XACML policies to describe access control for use in health grids. We discuss the motivations for the use of role-based access control (RBAC) in a medical context. Using a simple motivating example we consider the use of the RBAC profile for XACML and discuss the limitations of the current profile. Finally, we di...

Objectives: The principal aim of the eDiaMoND project is to develop a prototype Grid infrastructure to support the needs of the breast care community. The prototype system is but one major deliverable of the project; the other is a blueprint document that describes how a system such as eDiaMoND might be deployed throughout the United Kingdom to sup...

By applying the latest technologies in image compression for managing the storage of massive image data within cultural heritage databases and by exploiting the universality of the Internet we are now able not only to effectively digitize, record and preserve, but also to promote the dissemination of cultural heritage. In this work we present an ap...

By applying the latest technologies in image compression for managing the storage of massive image data within cultural heritage databases and by exploiting the universality of the Internet we are now able not only to effectively digitize, record and preserve, but also to promote the dissemination of cultural heritage. In this work we present an ap...

The Standard for Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) specifies a non-proprietary digital imaging format, file structure and data interchange protocols for the transfer of biomedical images and non-image data related to such images--it is a specification of the components that are required in order to achieve inter-operability bet...

Developments in 2D and 3D digitization and visualization technologies, as well as in measurement instrumentation, combined with the emerging multimedia databases and network technologies offer new possibilities for the integrated and complete description of cultural objects. Our Institute, with main interest in the preservation of cultural heritage...

In recent years, research and presentation of cultural heritage have an important ally: technology. The "Ark of Refugee Heirloom" is a project of high cultural importance, since it aims at the recording and documentation of unknown heirlooms, kept mainly in private collections. The objective is the classification and publication of primary data, in...

Recent developments in 3D technologies and measurement instrumentation combined with multimedia databases offer today new possibilities for the integrated and complete description of Cultural Heritage objects. A first attempt is made to develop a database for archaeological ceramic artifacts where in addition to the digitized 2D and 3D image, descr...