The success of the future Internet will not be measured by performance alone, but by its social and societal effects that alter our quality of life. The next-generation Internet must connect not only machines but also users: families and friends, representatives and rights advocates. There are immense technical challenges in facilitating communication while protecting user privacy and guarding their security. We address three key challenges. First, we apply user-focused research into developing practical secure communication between friends, laying the groundwork for social messaging without trusting centralized authorities to provide identities. Second, we develop advanced cryptographic techniques for processing private data without divulging it to application providers, placing private social applications on a solid theoretical foundation. Finally, we propose to fundamentally change how cooperation is encouraged and misbehavior is punished in distributed applications by embedding social network data into the design of applications.
This work has important broader impacts. Social networking is incredibly popular and maintaining privacy is a significant problem within these systems. The desire for privacy prevents individuals from participating fully and makes those who do participate vulnerable to various problems including potential identity theft. Because of the importance of the problem and problem domain, the results of our research will have significant public impact. Graduate and undergraduate students working on this proposal will gain experience with social applications, evaluating cryptographic protocols, and building systems that combine social data. We have actively involved undergraduate students in our research, and expect to continue.
