Technical Enforcement of Informational Assurances

Dealing with informational assurances we have to consider the full complexity of the information society. In a norrower sense informational assurances comprise informational rights, the related legal and social rules as well as the enforcing technical mechanisms. The right of privacy, understood as informational self-determination, is taken as an important example. Starting from a discussion of present shortcomings in technically enforcing this right, we outline some recent developments in the German and European legislation concerning privacy, teleservices and digital signatures. Also some selected mechanisms for improving the technical enforcement are evaluated, including federated system structure and local security autonomy, cryptographic protocols enabling cooperation under threats, and the tamper resistant hardware foundation. Finally, we advocate the shift from the traditional paradigm of reference books implemented as centralized databases to the new paradigm of communicating personal data agents. The new paradigm is devised to enhance the data subject ́s means to technically enforce the interests concerning privacy.