Self-Sovereign Identity for Consented and Content-Based Access to Medical Records Using Blockchain

Electronic health records (EHRs) and medical data are classified as personal data in every privacy law, meaning that any related service that includes processing such data must come with full security, confidentiality, privacy, and accountability. Solutions for health data management, as in storing it, sharing and processing it, are emerging quickly and were significantly boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic that created a need to move things online. EHRs make a crucial part of digital identity data, and the same digital identity trends - as in self-sovereign identity powered by decentralized ledger technologies like blockchain, are being researched or implemented in contexts managing digital interactions between health facilities, patients, and health professionals. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based solution enabling secure exchange of EHRs between different parties powered by a self-sovereign identity (SSI) wallet and decentralized identifiers. We also make use of a consortium IPFS network for off-chain storage and attribute-based encryption (ABE) to ensure data confidentiality and integrity. Through our solution, we grant users full control over their medical data and enable them to securely share it in total confidentiality over secure communication channels between user wallets using encryption. We also use DIDs for better user privacy and limit any possible correlations or identification by using pairwise DIDs. Overall, combining this set of technologies guarantees secure exchange of EHRs, secure storage, and management along with by-design features inherited from the technological stack. © 2023 Marie Tcholakian et al.

Understanding Digital Identity during the Pandemic: An Investigation of Two Chinese Spanish Teachers

During combatting the COVID-19 pandemic, the most widespread change in Spanish as a foreign language instruction is imperative online teaching. It demands that language teachers move all teaching activities to virtual platforms, facilitating the construction of their digital identities. However, there is scarce attention on Spanish teachers' professional development, given the necessity of understanding the evolvement of their identities across virtual learning platforms. Through the lens of a case study, this research explores the digital identities of Spanish as a foreign language teachers during the school lockdown in 2022. The data includes semi-structured interviews, virtual classroom discourse, lesson plans, and reflective writing. The results show that Spanish teachers formed multiple digital identities, including curriculum innovators, vulnerable actors, involuntary team workers, overseas returnees, and academic researchers. Among them, the first three are core identities, while overseas returnees and academic researchers are peripheral identities. Regardless, they were formed and negotiated under the influence of teachers' past experiences, the exercise of agency, emotional vulnerability, and social context. In addition, a contradictory belief in teaching was also identified during the formation of Chinese Spanish teachers' digital identities.

Exploring the Legal Regulation of Social Media in Europe: A Review of Dynamics and Challenges—Current Trends and Future Developments

Today, the process of digitisation of everyday life pervades all aspects and areas in which human beings move and realise their interests. The political sphere is no exception and is also influenced by technological innovation. Over the last decade, the development of Web 2.0 has meant that cyberspace, albeit through electronic means, has taken on the characteristics of a physical place in the guise of social platforms. Currently, the continued proliferation of social networks is reviving numerous debates and latent issues that are still unresolved. Against this backdrop, research has been undertaken to understand the different aspects and the many meanings of this new dimension across different fields of research. In fact, the work will initially focus on the role they possess in society and the possible negative declinations resulting from disinformation and will then come to a legal overview in terms of European regulations, with reference to the protection of privacy and personal data following the enactment of EU Regulation 679/2016. The objective of this study is to provide a sociological and legal framework for the ethics of artificial intelligence and legal regulation in Europe. This study aims to promote a scientific and political discussion to improve understanding of the pervasiveness of social networks and related legal implications. Additionally, this study seeks to offer a perspective that leads to ethical and sustainable solutions.

The payments industry in Australia: Status and future developments

The payments ecosystem is experiencing accel-erated change, with the COVID-19 pandemic acting as an additional catalyst. This paper looks at the example of Australia, where regulation has been reset to reflect, and future-proof its handling of, these changes. With a focus on regulation, and the modernisation of payments systems, this paper concentrates on what these changes mean for legacy payment systems, for the future of cash, and for their end users, especially in terms of their trust and confidence in payments. © Henry Stewart Publications, 1750-1806.

Hybrid university didactics: creative digital identity and multimodality

The incipient interest in hybrid and collaborative didactics in times of COVID-19 highlights the fundamental role of digital hybrids in the training of university students. New mobile devices allow the ubiquity of teaching-learning processes. But they not only allow the possibility of sharing and communicating at any time and place. In these devices, different tools that integrate different representation systems converge, and offer new forms of construction, representation and communication of knowledge. From the questioning of the hegemonic technological culture, and from a didactic approach that advocates comprehensive and critical teaching, we want to present the creative functions of mobile devices so that students can build their own texts, new multimodal narratives, for the construction of a creative digital identity. An identity that allows them to perceive, analyse, reflect, produce, communicate and participate in their environment in a collaborative way. We present a transgressive didactic proposal based on photographic narration that displays new semiotic ways of building knowledge and making it known. We discuss its value to rethink other functions of academic knowledge and assessment, beyond achievement tests, critical dimensions in the University.

Video injection attacks on remote digital identity verification solution using face recognition

The COVID 19 pandemic has fuelled the acceleration of the use of remote services as, for example, video conferences or digital identity verification solutions. Due to videoconferences or social medias, attackers have access to rich biometric sources and therefore make it possible to carry out high quality attacks such as videos of deepfakes, or morphing, against face recognition system. These kind of video attacks allow the attacker to fool face recognition even when these systems are secured by challenge-based liveness detection by presenting them. In order to prevent against these kind of attacks, adding an artefact detection to these systems could be a good solution. However, we will see in this paper that the development of remote digital identity verification tools on mobile application or on a computer (through a web app) opens the path to video injection attacks which bypass all of these security systems, namely a face recognition system secured with both challenge-based liveness detection and artefact detection. © by the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics.

Implications of Digital Citizenship in Social Media to build a safe environment in the Covid-19 situation

The great technological convergence, which has emerged in recent years due to the appropriation of the globalized world and the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, leads us to formulate various approaches and questions, in relation to the digital identity of the users on the internet and on how to forge a global and secure digital citizenship. New media based on digital technologies such as social media, are generating a daily activity both as means of communication, interaction, and especially today as educational environments, this is leading to the formation of a digital society. This global phenomenon responds to a research study raised in university-level students from the city of Arequipa, this had as a pilot institution for the research process the Catholic University of Santa Mariá. Under the survey proposal, the implications related to social interaction in social media were determined;based on these results, some proposals were made to build safe environments for interaction in this time of pandemic and for subsequent years. It was concluded that it is essential to be able to generate and disseminate protocols and social norms to students for digital environments and social media, to establish safe environments for interaction and navigation. © 2021 IEEE.

Analysis of Digital Self-Presentation Practices and Profiles of Spanish Adolescents on Instagram and TikTok

This study analyses self-presentation practices and profiles among Spanish teenagers on Instagram and TikTok. Both of these online spaces prioritise and promote visual publications, are structured to allow feedback on self-presentation, and offer the user filters both to control self-image and to target specific audiences. Three research questions guided the methodological process for the twofold analysis of self-presentation practices on social networks: an exploratory factor analysis to identify latent factors among these practices;and a descriptive analysis of the profiles identified by gender and age. Results indicate that adolescents' self-presentation practices were related to three different factors: social validation;authenticity;and image control. One of the most outstanding results is that self-presentation practices could be less guided by social feedback, since the number of followers or likes was irrelevant for most adolescents, and that adolescents increasingly tend to be guided by innovative predispositions of truthfulness. In turn, conclusions suggest that teens need to be equipped with suitable self-representation practices for safe and sustainable identity narratives on social networks, since the global COVID-19 pandemic has exponentially increased both the usage and the time spent on social networking sites, enlarging the availability of spaces for adolescents to express themselves and build their identities through different self-representation practices.

Attached to technology: Exploring identity and human relating in a virtual and corporeal world

Technology seems to be everywhere and anywhere in our daily lives. We have devices that allow us to communicate and interact with our work, our social circles, and the world at all times. This article explores and reflects on our attachment to technology and its impact on how we identify and relate to ourselves and others given the advent of sensory-based interactions such as touch, face, and voice recognition. Through the lens of intrapsychic, interpersonal, and systemic processes, the author reflects on the implications of these developments for script theory. He seeks to question, describe, and better understand how these processes affect our sense of reality so that our discourse as a community of practitioners shifts to a curious and accounting process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

An Interface Between Legacy and Modern Mobile Devices for Digital Identity

In developing regions a substantial number of users rely on legacy and ultra-low-cost mobile devices. Unfortunately, many of these devices are not equipped to run the standard authentication or identity apps that are available for smartphones. Increasingly, apps that display Quick Response (QR) codes are being used to communicate personal credentials (e.g., Covid-19 vaccination certificates). This paper describes a novel interface for QR code credentials that is compatible with legacy mobile devices. Our solution, which we have released under open source licensing, allows Web Application Enabled legacy mobile devices to load and display standard QR codes. This technique makes modern identity platforms available to previously excluded and economically disadvantaged populations. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Perspectives of digital identity - the case of online education during the COVID-19 pandemic

Each individual is unique, and the digital identity associated with a person should model and guarantee this uniqueness and the ability to reliably recognize him/her. In this paper, we review the challenges posed by the sudden transfer of a significant part of the social activity in the online realm, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with unforeseen consequences on the educational process in particular. If there was a fairly large spectrum of economic activities that were taking place or were facilitated via a digital medium prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the education system worldwide proved to not have been prepared to provide an effective and consistent response to the going online approach, which was merely a choice, but rather the only embraceable option. In the context of online education, this paper can design a comprehensive and integrated framework for assisting the process of students' digital identity validation, particularly when attending an examination or any other form of academic evaluation conducted remotely. We also consider the integration of digital identity validation with platforms that offer educational content, knowledge evaluation tests, and other elements to which access must be ensured only for authorized users, based on a strict identity identification process to eliminate those who want to defraud or disrupt the functionality of the system.

Health-ID: A Blockchain-Based Decentralized Identity Management for Remote Healthcare.

COVID-19 has made eHealth an imperative. The pandemic has been a true catalyst for remote eHealth solutions such as teleHealth. Telehealth facilitates care, diagnoses, and treatment remotely, making them more efficient, accessible, and economical. However, they have a centralized identity management system that restricts the interoperability of patient and healthcare provider identification. Thus, creating silos of users that are unable to authenticate themselves beyond their eHealth application's domain. Furthermore, the consumers of remote eHealth applications are forced to trust their service providers completely. They cannot check whether their eHealth service providers adhere to the regulations to ensure the security and privacy of their identity information. Therefore, we present a blockchain-based decentralized identity management system that allows patients and healthcare providers to identify and authenticate themselves transparently and securely across different eHealth domains. Patients and healthcare providers are uniquely identified by their health identifiers (healthIDs). The identity attributes are attested by a healthcare regulator, indexed on the blockchain, and stored by the identity owner. We implemented smart contracts on an Ethereum consortium blockchain to facilities identification and authentication procedures. We further analyze the performance using different metrics, including transaction gas cost, transaction per second, number of blocks lost, and block propagation time. Parameters including block-time, gas-limit, and sealers are adjusted to achieve the optimal performance of our consortium blockchain.