SWRL-based Access Policies for Linked Data

Social applications are one of the fastest growing areas in the Web. However, privacy issues ensue if all information of all users of these applications is stored on a single computer system. With small extensions to Semantic Web technologies and Linked Data concepts, a distributed approach to the social web is possible, where users retain fine-grained control over their data and are still able to combine their data with users on different systems. We describe our concept of a Policy-enabled Linked Data Server (PeLDS) obeying user-defined access policies for the stored information. PeLDS also supports configurationfree distributed authentication. Access policies are expressed in a newly developed compact notation for the Semantic Web Rule Language. Authentication is performed using SSL certificates and the FOAF+SSL verification approach. We evaluate our concept using a prototype implementation and a distributed address book application.