eJustice IST-2002-001567
Project objectives and key results
Objectives
The eJustice project is one of the first "Integrated Projects" of the 6th Framework Programme. It ran from March 2004 to February 2006. It had three main objectives which, when combined, have the potential to help transform European industry and society in the following ways:- Going beyond the state of the art in several Trust and Security technologies
- Convincing key representatives of civil society that these technologies, and in particular biometry, do not represent a threat to the privacy of citizens when used within well-defined guidelines
- Convincing major public authorities to adopt the results for their own use.
The Technology Challenges
With regard to technological research, the eJustice project addressed- Authentication via multi-modal biometry
- Integration of workflow security with role-based access control
- Representation of legal processes
- Reliable and rapid authentication achieved via the use of bi-modal biometry.
- No need for a central data base of biometric information thanks to match-on-card
- No need for a central data base of roles, achieved via linking card and PKI
- Because of the conviction within eJustice that biometric information is private and should be protected as such, care is taken to prevent the leakage of biometric information, thanks to robust security systems in place
The project linked these representations with workflow processing, and integrated authentication mechanisms with the control of workflow processing, thus enabling a novel security mechanism within workflow control.
Finally, it developed a new role-based access control scheme, where the role is dynamically determined by the workflow. Via new language processing tools, it linked the role and the representation of data, thus providing a better protection of the data and more easily understandable information. This solution will be the basis for a new version of the legal information system of the Republic of Austria to be delivered in 2006.
eJustice and Civil Society
With regard to civil society, eJustice put in place Ethics Committees in France and in the UK. In both Member States there is concern about privacy with many either opposed to biometric usage (France) or anxious about the deployment of ID cards (UK). This consultative procedure of the Ethics groups helped project partners better understand where the concerns were, and better inform stakeholders of the state of the art of the technology. This was a breakthrough in explaining to human rights associations how biometric data can simultaneously be used as well as protected. This work informed the debate which led to the adoption of the Basic Access Control (BAC) on biometric passports.With regards to the preparation of deployment, all these technologies are integrated into demonstrators and mock-ups which address specific problems of Eurojust (the European Arrest Warrant) and of the Bundeskanzleramt (the Austrian Chancellery and its e-Recht and RIS systems).
Key results
After 24 months, the project has made significant progress in demonstrating the potential and impact of the results:- by delivering a web site, referred to in over 60 professional web sites, which explains the project and gives access to online demonstrations (WP2)
- by being one of the first initiatives to explain the risks of exposing biometric data; in so doing, and showing that this data can be used while not being divulged, it helped convince human rights associations to oppose the first ICAO directive, and adopt the Basic Access Control (BAC) mechanism on passports (WP3)
- by delivering the first demonstrator of the on-chip matching multibiometry card and environment (WP4). This not only required significant progress in the two monomodal biometries (the face recognition algorithms of eJustice compare well with the best Face Recognition Grand Challenge (FRGC) of NIST), but also a new data fusion method allowed a performance increase by a factor of 6 to 40. It is now possible to store biometric data and biometric algorithms on a smart card. The error rate is the same as with a PIN code and the matching takes less than five seconds per operation.
- by demonstrating the possible interoperability between X509 PKIs already adopted or supported by public administrations, and showing that interoperability is above all a political decision, it helped convince the European Commission launch in 2006 a call for tender to create a bridge interoperability platform (WP5)
- by delivering a new mechanism for securing workflow processing via the integration of workflow and role-based access control (WP6), it helped convince public administrations (BKA, Eurojust) to launch major programmes to take better advantage of IT.
- by delivering a demonstrator of a new representation for law (WP7) http://rechtsinformatik.jura.uni-sb.de/ejustice/lexecute/ it opens up a new way of teaching law. By showing that one cannot describe the law outside of the context of a court, it prepares the adoption of quality control techniques in law.
- by delivering a mock-up of a complete system, under the specifications of Eurojust, to help control the European Arrest Warrant process across European jurisdictions (WP8)
- by delivering the language processing tools needed to automate the processing of documents resulting from the workflow controlled e-Recht system of the BKA (WP9), it proposes new access to digital data, neither based on access to files nor records, but on a representation of data adapted to the need- to -know of the user. This highlighted the need for a new role- based access control, where the role is dynamically determined by the workflow. Most importantly, this convinced BKA to continue in this direction.
- by convincing key European political decision makers of the importance of this approach (Justice and Home Affairs Ministers Meeting, Newcastle 7-9 Sept. and European Commission/French Ambassador meeting, London 27 Sept., Austrian Chancellery Hofburg Presidency conference in late May 2006) (WP3)
- and by preparing its future developments and deployment in R4eGov, supported by the EC's eGovernment Unit, with a prestigious set of new potential users (e.g. Bundesgerichtshof, Eurojust, Europol, FEDICT) in addition to Austria's Bundeskanzleramt.
eJustice is also present in the European Biometric Portal (www.europeanbiometrics.info) and in the Biometric Centre of Excellence opened 25 April 2006. This Centre will ensure that WP8 demonstration of eJustice components integration will be permanently available to researchers in Brussels. - eJustice helped generate a spin-off start-up, MobileGov (www.mobilegov.com), which proposes security solutions related with the new needs generated by the deployment of secure networks using insecure equipment. Awarded a "Best innovation 2005" prize at Capital IT, it has been adopted by various large organizations such as the City of Cannes and a very large nuclear industry company.
- eJustice produced over 20 scientific publications and articles, 7 EU and/or US patent applications, and is being submitted for the Descartes Prize 2006.
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