Executive Summary iii

Introduction  1

1 Data Summary  1

1.1 Data types and origins  2

1.2 List of partners who will act as either Data Controllers or Data
Processors  3

2 FAIR Data  4

2.1 Making data findable, including provisions for metadata  4

2.2 Making data openly accessible  5

2.3 Making data interoperable  5

2.4 Increased data re-use (licensing of data)  6

3 Allocation of Resources  6

3.1 Estimated Costs  6

3.2 Responsibilities  8

3.3 Long Term Preservation  8

4 Data Security  9

4.1 Data Storage and Preservation  9

4.2 Data Retention and Destruction  9

4.2.1 Scope  9

4.2.2 Classification and marking of research project data  9

4.3 Notification of Criminal Activity  12

5 Legal and ethical Aspects  12

5.1 Data Collection, Exchange, and Access  12

5.2 Personal Data  14

5.3 Informed Consent Procedure  17

5.4 Ethics Advisory Board  17

iv

#  Introduction

This version of the Data Management Plan (DMP) is the first iteration released
in project month 6. The DMP will be updated regularly during the course of the
project. The final version will be released at the end of the project runtime
(D8.3). The document has been created by AIT, the project partner in charge of
the project data management task (T8.9), in consultation with all other
project partners. This DMP complies with H2020 requirements [1].

The DMP specifies procedures on the **collection, storage, access, and sharing
of research data within TITANIUM** . Research data in TITANIUM includes
synthetic and real-life data (see section 1).

The DMP categorises the various types of data produced in TITANIUM and it
specifies how data will be made available. The DMP describes:

  * the data sets that will be collected, processed or generated by TITANIUM, 

  

  * the data management life cycle for all aforementioned data sets, 

  

  * the methodology and standards following which data will be collected, processed or generated, 

  

  * whether and how this data will be shared and/or made open, 

  

  * how the data will be curated and preserved, and • the procedure for notification of criminal activity. 

  

The consortium partner **AIT** is responsible for implementing the DMP and
ensures that it is reviewed and revised during the project runtime. Regular
check points on the status of the data will ensure that the Data Management
Plan is implemented as foreseen, and that the procedure for notification of
criminal activity is strictly complied with. Checking both status of data and
notification of criminal activities are added as standing agenda points in the
bi-weekly EB calls.

This DMP does refer to social, legal, ethics and privacy aspects, which are
addressed in more detail and handled in context of WP1 and WP2, and under
supervision of the Ethics Advisory Board (EAB). Due to the privacy and data
protection sensitive nature of TITANIUM this DMP has strong dependencies with
various deliverables from these WPs, most of which are still upcoming or work
in progress. This and other factors such as important changes that might occur
to the project (e.g. inclusion of new datasets, changes in consortium
policies, external factors) will require regular updates of the DMP. A final
update will be released at project Month 36 (D8.3).

#  Data Summary

The purpose of the data collection in TITANIUM is to develop and validate
novel data-driven techniques and solutions designed to support Law Enforcement
Agencies (LEAs) charged with investigating criminal or terrorist activities
involving virtual currencies and/or underground markets in the darknet. In
this context, TITANIUM will **collect** **publicly available data in
compliance with ethical, legal, social and privacy/GDPR regulations** (see
section 5). The data will only be collected by researchers and for research
purposes and not for forensic purposes. **It will not be used to conduct
criminal investigations and will not be shared with LEAs.**

TITANIUM operates under a strict scientific paradigm. Researchers involved in
TITANIUM only use and operate with **research data** , which includes real-
life data collected from the dark web and synthetic data (see below).
**Research data does not include real-life data by LEAs.** Only in the Field
Labs (WP6) the participating LEAs will, if applicable, make use of real
investigations and related data. However, said data will never leave the
premises of the participating LEAs.

TITANIUM will collect **real-life data** about entities and relationships
aggregated from relevant sources (e.g., underground markets, dark web forums,
TCP/IP level metadata), generate and visualise networks from the aggregated
data. At this point in the project we know that we will collect the following
data for research purposes:

  * Publicly available Blockchain data from Bitcoin and eventually other virtual currencies (various database formats) 

  

  * Scrapes of publicly available Darknet material carried out within the project (HTML) 

  

  * Publicly available scrapes and dumps of darknet markets, but only to the extent that they derive from whitelisted sources with clear provenance (HTML) 

  

Next to the collection of real-life data, TITANIUM will provide **synthetic
data** in order to test new investigation approaches. This will be necessary
in the absence of a sufficient number or real cases or if the use of real data
is precluded for legal, ethical, or security reasons. For example, we will
probably use synthetic data to simulate a forensic analysis of seized devices.
This data may be entirely synthetic or derived from real world data. If
derived from real world data it will not be possible to learn anything about
identifiable natural persons from the synthetic data.

In particular, the datasets (real-life and synthetic) will be used to fine-
tune, train and test the algorithms of WP4 and WP5, and in the WP6 Field Labs
(where applicable real data; otherwise synthetic data). The size of the
dataset used in TITANIUM will supposedly be on the order of hundreds of
gigabytes to tens of terabytes. However, this is just a first estimation that
will be updated in the next DMP update.

TITANIUM outcomes are useful for European LEAs. However, due to privacy and
data protection regulations data access and re-use will be restricted to the
TITANIUM consortium partners. All partners who will act as either Data
Controllers or Data Processors have provided and signed Data Protection
Statements, which comply with European data protection regulations.

##  Data types and origins

TITANIUM will generate/collect the following types of data:  
  
<table>  
<tr>  
<th>

**Type**

</th>  
<th>

**Description**

</th>  
<th>

**Origin**

</th>  
<th>

**Format**

</th> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Raw data

</td>  
<td>

  * Crawled datasets gathered by the collection services 

  

  * Datasets extracted by forensics tools 

  

  * Ground-truth datasets (e.g., known mixing service patterns or dark market actor attribution cases) 

  

  * Datasets matching realworld identities with addresses of virtual wallets 

  

</td>  
<td>

Publicly available

Blockchain data from

Bitcoin

Scrapes of publicly available Darknet material carried out

within the project

Publicly available scrapes and dumps of darknet markets, but only to the
extent that they derive from

</td>  
<td>

CSV

</td> </tr> </table>  
<table>  
<tr>  
<th>

</th>  
<th>

</th>  
<th>

whitelisted sources with clear provenance

</th>  
<th>

</th> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Synthetic test data

</td>  
<td>

Synthetic test data sets produced by simulators for the evaluation of the
applied methods avoiding potential privacy or security issues when being
shared across borders

</td>  
<td>

Entirely synthetic

OR

Derived from anonymised real-world

data complying with

GDPR

</td>  
<td>

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Knowledge graphs

</td>  
<td>

Networks (knowledge graphs) constructed from the aggregated data (organisation
and market networks)

</td>  
<td>

Publicly available

Blockchain data from

Bitcoin

Scrapes of publicly available Darknet material carried out

within the project

Publicly available scrapes and dumps of darknet markets, but only to the
extent that they derive from whitelisted sources with clear provenance

</td>  
<td>

database

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Interview data

</td>  
<td>

Data from interviews with the Field Lab participants

</td>  
<td>

Field work: Interviews

</td>  
<td>

Open Office or MS Word (docx/doc)

</td> </tr> </table>

A **collection of data sets containing the ground-truths and synthetic data**
collected over the course of the TITANIUM project will be included in D4.4:
Synthetic and ground truth data sets [M18, COB, Data + Report].

**Initial and final results and analysis of the data collected during the
Field Labs** will be included in D6.3: Initial Field Lab studies analysis and
evaluation results [24] and D6.4: Final Field Lab analysis and evaluation
results [36].

##  List of partners who will act as either Data Controllers or Data
Processors  
  
<table>  
<tr>  
<th>

**Partner no**

</th>  
<th>

**Institution**

</th> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**1**

</td>  
<td>

AIT AUSTRIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY GMBH (AIT)

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**2**

</td>  
<td>

NEDERLANDSE ORGANISATIE VOOR TOEGEPAST NATUURWETENSCHAPPELIJK ONDERZOEK TNO
(TNO)

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**3**

</td>  
<td>

UNIVERSITAET INNSBRUCK (UIBK)

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**5**

</td>  
<td>

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON (UCL)

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**6**

</td>  
<td>

FUNDACION CENTRO DE TECNOLOGIAS DE INTERACCION VISUAL Y COMUNICACIONES
VICOMTECH (VICOM)

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**7**

</td>  
<td>

COBLUE CYBERSECURITY BV (COB)

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**8**

</td>  
<td>

DENCE GMBH (DEN)

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**10**

</td>  
<td>

COUNTERCRAFT SL (CCR)

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**11**

</td>  
<td>

BUNDESKRIMINALAMT (BKA)

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**12**

</td>  
<td>

THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL POLICE ORGANIZATION (INT)

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**13**

</td>  
<td>

NATIONAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (NBI)

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**14**

</td>  
<td>

BUNDESMINISTERIUM FUER INNERES (BMI)

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**15**

</td>  
<td>

MINISTERIO DEL INTERIOR (MIR-PN)

</td> </tr> </table>

#  FAIR Data

##  Making data findable, including provisions for metadata

Due to complications brought about by privacy and data protection issues,
TITANIUM opted out of the Pilot on Open Research Data. Nevertheless, data
management is an important aspect of TITANIUM insofar as it supports and
promotes system and organisational interoperability between cooperating LEAs,
while at the same time ensuring that data protection and privacy regulations
are fully enforced.

Therefore, the findability aspect of the data, in the context of FAIR, is only
relevant to the TITANIUM consortium partners and stakeholders. In context of
WP4 (Task 4.6) a data registry will be created. However, this task has not
started yet, so we cannot identify the requirements yet.

WP3 (Task 3.4) will identify **data sharing and provenance tracking** needs
within and between configurable components and develop corresponding
conceptual and technical models. This includes:

  * **User contributed contextual information** , such as tags or annotations attached to virtual currency addresses (this data has to be regarded personal data itself) 

  

  * **Provenance data structures** that support case-specific compliance, replicability of analyses, and the generation of verifiable audit trails 

  

One of the options we will investigate is the use of Blockchain technology to
setup a provenancepreserving and privacy-aware dataset ledger, in line with
recently proposed out-of-domain applications of blockchain technology.

Relevant deliverables in this context:

  * D2.1: Identification and analysis of the legal, societal and ethical impacts of the TITANIUM tools [M12, KIT, Report] 

  

  * D2.2: Analysis of INTERPOL’s legal framework and identification of requirements [M12, INT, Report] 

  

  * D2.3: Legal and ethical conditions for the conduct of the Field Labs [M18, KIT] 

  

  * D3.4: Report on data sharing and provenance tracking models [M18, AIT, Report] 

  

  * D4.6: Dataset registry service [M36, AIT, Software] 

  

##  Making data openly accessible

As explained above, **TITANIUM opted out of the Pilot on Open Research Data**
. Therefore the accessibility aspect of data, in the context of FAIR, is only
relevant to the TITANIUM consortium partners and stakeholders.

  * All partners who will act as either Data Controllers or Data Processors (see above) have provided and signed Data Protection Statements. 

  

  * The TITANIUM Field Labs will, if applicable, make use of real investigations and related data, but said data will never leave the premises of the participating LEAs. 

  

  * The collected publicly available data will only be used for research purposes and not for forensic purposes. The collected data will not be shared with LEAs. 

  

A **dataset registry service** to facilitate sharing and exchange of research
data among project participants and associated stakeholders will be set up in
context of WP4. The distributed registry service keeps a record of datasets
produced within the TITANIUM project and facilitates data sharing and
synchronization among participants and associated stakeholders, adhering to
legal and privacy restrictions. Mechanism for logging access to the data, as
well as regulations with respect to copying and sharing the data will be
addressed as well in WP4.

**Standardised technical interfaces between TITANIUM service containers** to
be specified in WP3 and developed in WP4 and WP5 will ensure interoperability
in the execution of the modules. Among other, this will include a usable and
compact **storage and access model for bulk data** containing relevant
evidence (market prices, offers, transactions, entities, media files, metadata
etc.).

Further details in context of data accessibility will be clarified once Task
4.6 has started (e.g. conditions for access, machine readable license, how the
identity of the person accessing the data will be ascertained). We might
consider containing the list of persons that is allowed to access the data in
the blockchain as well.

##  Making data interoperable

TITANIUM research data will, if possible, be stored in open formats, which
will allow broad re-use of the datasets (to the extent that this is consistent
with privacy and data protection guidelines; refer to Legal and ethical
Aspects). The following **standards for data curation and interoperability**
will be employed:

  * In general the work packages will seek to store the data generated/collected during the project in open formats. An open format is defined as “one that is platform independent, machine readable, and made available to the public without restrictions that would impede the re-use of that information.” 

  

  * Aggregated data will be stored in CSV files according to the RFC 4180 specification, JSON, and XML, whenever possible. 

  

  * We will also seek compatibility with the import/export functions of other forensics platforms, in particular those under development in the ASGARD and BITCRIME projects. 

  

The public availability of selected final publications will enhance
transparency and reproducibility of the applied methods and achieved results.
This approach will support interoperability between LEAs across Europe when it
is required.

##  Increased data re-use (licensing of data)

Due to complications brought about by privacy and data protection
requirements, re-use of data, metadata and analysis results is restricted. It
will be investigated if less sensitive data (e.g. synthetic or those compiled
from open sources and samples without association to real persons) can be
stored on a trusted platform (e.g. Cambridge Cloud Cybercrime Center  1  )
under restricted access.

#  Allocation of Resources

##  Estimated Costs

The core services required for data management are

  * Content Management Service (CMS) 

  

This is a system that allows managed access to data and metadata

  * File Service (FS) 

  

This is the underlying storage network for digital files and includes the
back-up services necessary for digital preservation

  * Data Sharing Platform (DSP) 

  

This is the discovery and distribution service that allows consortium members
to share nonclassified information

  * Software Sharing Platform (SSP) 

  

This is the management system for project software, which includes versioning,
release management, and issue tracking

It is assumed that all partners will implement CMS+FS locally for the
management of their local projectrelated data. As the project coordinator, AIT
will in addition provide the Data Sharing Platform (based on the open source
Redmine tool) for the consortium. As the project technical coordinator, TNO
will provide the software sharing platform, based on the open source tool
GitLab.

The estimated costs for data management within the TITANIUM project are based
on known real costs at the coordinating institution (AIT), extrapolated for
each partner based on the size of the institution and its geographic location.

_Figure 1: AIT monthly costs for IT services_

Figure 1 indicates the AIT monthly costs per instance for various IT services,
including File Services (FS: €168.62/Month), Content Management Services (CMS:
€36.08/month), and the Data Sharing Platform (RPS, or Redmine Project Service:
€43,17/month). These figures are from 2015; but we assume that inflation
versus IT performance (e.g. storage costs per unit volume) will lead to fairly
stable costs over the three-year project lifetime of TITANIUM.

_Figure 2: AIT monthly costs for file service_

Figure 2 shows a breakdown of the File Service costs at AIT. The largest
contributing factor is the cost of the EMC storage area network, but other
costs, including system administration and backups, are also included in the
analysis. The point of this figure is to demonstrate that costs at AIT are
wellunderstood; the primary uncertainties in the overall cost analysis are (a)
how well to the known costs for AIT predict similar costs at partner
institutions, and (b) to what extent can the costs for an instance of a given
service be fully attributed to a given project.

_Table 1: Estimated Data Management Costs for TITANIUM_  
  
<table>  
<tr>  
<th>

**Partner**

</th>  
<th>

**Services**

</th>  
<th>

**Estimated Costs per month**

</th> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

AIT

</td>  
<td>

CMS, FS, DSP

</td>  
<td>

€ 250.00

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

TNO

</td>  
<td>

CMS, FS, SSP

</td>  
<td>

€ 250.00

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

UIBK

</td>  
<td>

CMS, FS

</td>  
<td>

€ 150.00

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

KIT

</td>  
<td>

CMS, FS

</td>  
<td>

€ 150.00

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

UCL

</td>  
<td>

CMS, FS

</td>  
<td>

€ 200.00

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

VICOM

</td>  
<td>

CMS, FS

</td>  
<td>

€ 100.00

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

COB

</td>  
<td>

CMS, FS

</td>  
<td>

€ 50.00

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

DEN

</td>  
<td>

CMS, FS

</td>  
<td>

€ 50.00

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

TRI

</td>  
<td>

CMS, FS

</td>  
<td>

€ 100.00

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

CCR

</td>  
<td>

CMS, FS

</td>  
<td>

€ 50.00

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

BKA

</td>  
<td>

CMS, FS

</td>  
<td>

€ 200.00

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

INT

</td>  
<td>

CMS, FS

</td>  
<td>

€ 200.00

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

NBI

</td>  
<td>

CMS, FS

</td>  
<td>

€ 50.00

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

BMI

</td>  
<td>

CMS, FS

</td>  
<td>

€ 100.00

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

MIR-PN

</td>  
<td>

CMS, FS

</td>  
<td>

€ 100.00

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**Total costs per month**

</td>  
<td>

**€ 2,000.00**

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**Total costs project lifetime**

</td>  
<td>

**€ 72,000.00**

</td> </tr> </table>

The results of our estimate are shown in Table 1. We estimate monthly costs of
approximately twothousand euros for data management for the consortium. Over
the 36-month lifetime of the project, this leads to a total estimated cost of
€72.000.

These costs are covered by overhead costs at each institution. However, it
should be noted that these costs will continue well beyond the lifetime of the
project.

##  Responsibilities

The consortium partner **AIT** is responsible for implementing the DMP and
ensures that it is reviewed and revised during the project runtime.

**Name and contact details** of the person responsible on behalf of the
beneficiary AIT during the project runtime:

Michela Vignoli

AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH

Digital Safety and Security Department

Donau-City-Straße 1 1220 Vienna

_michela.vignoli@ait.ac.at_

+43 50550-4216

**All partners** who are either controlling or processing data are responsible
for managing the data that is provided to/processed in context of TITANIUM.
**Data Controllers and Data Processors** will be responsible for storing,
preserving, backing up, retaining or destroying the data provided for use in
TITANIUM according to security and data protection regulations in place.

##  Long Term Preservation

Due to complications brought about by privacy and data protection
requirements, long term preservation is not applicable to TITANIUM.

#  Data Security

##  Data Storage and Preservation

Data used in TITANIUM will not be centrally stored or managed. Each partner
who is either controlling or processing data is responsible for managing the
data according to security and data protection policies in place.

The data will be stored at each partner’s premises according to the data
protection policies of these partners. The data protection policies of each
partner have been collected and added as an annex to the institutional Data
Protection Statements (refer to D1.1). The partners’ data security and
protection policies comply with the following general policies defined for
TITANIUM:

  * The institution has the necessary technical resources and an operations team in place for storing, preserving, and protecting TITANIUM data 

  

  * The institution has appropriate data access and security measures in place, e.g. access right management, risk management, secure access and transfer of data 

  

  * The institution has appropriate storage and backup measures in place, e.g. system related backups, backup procedures 

  

In the interest of open research data, we will investigate the possibility to
find a permanent home for less sensitive data used in TITANIUM (e.g.,
synthetic or those compiled from open sources and samples without association
to real persons that cannot be de-anonymised). E.g., it will be considered to
liaise with the Cambridge Cloud Cybercrime Center  2  .

##  Data Retention and Destruction

This draft policy (in document version 1.0) is based on best-practices
developed in other H2020 security-related projects (refer to D1.3: POPD -
Requirement No. 4).

###  Scope

This procedure applies all TITANIUM researchers who require the retention of
research records or documentation. In particular, attention must be paid to
the classification of data and documentation, restrictions on storage and
electronic transmission and each consortium partner’s responsibilities under
national legislation.

###  Classification and marking of research project data

####  Marking hard copy research project data and documentation

  * The TITANIUM policy on protecting information has three classifications or markings: open, protect and control. 

  

  * All research project data must be classified and marked as “protect” as a minimum standard; sensitive personal data or data which might lead to significant personal distress if disclosed should additionally be classified and marked as “control”. 

  

  * Chief Investigators must ensure that all research project data is appropriately marked, in line with the guidance provided by TITANIUM 

  

####  Storing hard copy research project data and documentation

  * All hard-copy research project data and documentation must be stored in compliance with TITANIUM policies and guidance and must be classified and marked appropriately. 

  

  * All original hard-copy project data must be held securely; irreplaceable data (e.g., consent forms, interview notes, returned questionnaires) and data from which individuals might be identified (e.g., contact details) must be kept in a locked drawer or equivalent when not in use and should not be removed from the premises of the researcher. 

  

  * Administrative or supporting documentation (e.g., letters of approval, original protocol/application form, updates and amendments) should be held in a project folder in a secure location; master files which include participant/sample and other coding information must be treated as project data and kept in a locked drawer when not in use. 

  

  * All hard-copy documentation should be stored in a manner which facilitates legitimate use and access; file names should be logical and relevant; version control is critical and it should be clear which version of any document is the most recent or currently approved for use. 

  

####  Storing electronic research project data

  * All electronic research project data must be stored in compliance with TITANIUM policies and guidance and must be _**classified and marked appropriately** . _

  

  * All original, irreplaceable electronic project data and electronic data from which individuals might be identified must be stored on appropriately supported media, preferably appropriate centrally-allocated secure server space or similar; such data must never be stored on portable devices or temporary storage media. TITANIUM protocols for the storage of classified information must be followed. 

  

  * All other electronic project data must be held on appropriate centrally-allocated secure server space which is accessible to members of the project team; such data must not be held on personal or portable devices unless these are encrypted in line with TITANIUM requirements and except when this is necessary for the purposes of working off-site; amended documents must be returned to the appropriate TITANIUM maintained shared space when the work has been completed. 

  

  * Under no circumstances should original, irreplaceable data or sensitive personal data be stored using cloud storage services as this can place data outside UK and EU legal control. 

  

  * All electronic data should be stored in a manner which facilitates legitimate use and access; file names should be logical and relevant; version control is critical and it should be clear which version of any document is the most recent or currently approved for use. 

  

####  Controlling access to research project data

  * Research project data should be stored as indicated above and should be protected by password, encryption (for electronic data) or lock and key (hard copy). 

  

  * Research project data, whether electronic or hard-copy, should be accessible only to those people who have a legitimate purpose, including members of the project team, internal and external auditors and representatives of regulatory bodies. 

  

  * Members of staff, students and people external to TITANIUM who do not fall into the categories above should not be given access to research project data without good reason and/or prior permission. 

  

  * Research project data must be maintained in such a way that access is only possible by persons allowed to access the data. 

  

  * Requests for access to research data by parties not part of TITANIUM above must be directed through the Chief Investigator in the first instance. 

  

####  Archiving and disposal of research project data

  * All research project data, following the end of the ten-year data retention default period, may be retained by the researcher, under condition that it is pseudonymised or anonymised. 

  

  * Applications for archiving research data must be made in line with the process described in the TITANIUM archiving procedure. 

  

  * Research project data that is no longer required may be destroyed, subject to the demands of the publication cycle, continuing or follow-on projects or the requirements of the European Union. 

  

####  Handling personal information and European Law

  * TITANIUM is bound by, and all researchers are required to be aware of and to adhere to the provisions of, European Law relating to data protection. 

  

  * The primary function of data protection law is to ensure that an individual’s personal information is used lawfully (particularly only with a legal basis, in case of consent, only as agreed with that individual) and is not used for any purposes incompatible with those for which the data has been collected, including forward transmission to a third party. 

  

  * The following principles should be adopted when handling personal information: 

    * data should be anonymised at the point of collection where possible; 

  

    * all other data, unless there is a specific reason for maintaining an identifying link, should be anonymised as soon as possible after collection; 

  

    * data that cannot be anonymised must be held securely and in confidence, with coded access as appropriate, for a pre-set period of time which is subject to the consent of the individual concerned and the needs of the study or potential future requirements; 

  

    * anonymous, raw data should be transcribed or transferred for analysis as quickly as possible after collection; 

  

    * once transcribed or transferred, the data should be stored securely in condensed form; o as soon as transcription and validity have been assured to the satisfaction of the Chief Investigator, the raw data may be destroyed, subject to the requirements of any contract, funding body or other interested party, although there is no absolute requirement relating to this; 

  

    * condensed or interim data must be handled and stored as indicated in the Code of Practice; o interim data, all other related materials and results will remain the responsibility of the researcher or other appropriate individual until it can be demonstrated that: the project has been completed to the satisfaction of the funder/sponsor, any publications have been finalised to the satisfaction of all concerned and/or until any queries relating to the project have been addressed; and 

  

    * all retained information relating to the project should then be transferred to a secure local repository (data store or similar), central TITANIUM archive or specified data bank for the remaining period specified in the Code of Practice. 

  

  

####  Breach of Data Protection

• Any unauthorised or unlawful processing, accidental loss or destruction of,
or damage to, personal information held by any TITANIUM researcher in both
electronic and hard copy format will constitute a breach of TITANIUM Data
Protection. Any such breaches must be reported to the project Data Protection
Officer (DPO) and the relevant national authority.

##  Notification of Criminal Activity

The Procedure for Notification of Criminal Activity is defined in D1.9: OEI -
Requirement No. 11. The revised version from 2019-07-25 includes additional
information and examples with regards to when the notification of the DPO has
to occur.

Member states of the EU are independent and autonomous legal bodies with
individual legislative powers in the areas of criminal law and criminal
procedure law. Influences from the European level exist through “due process
of law” principles and general cross-border related topics such as mutual
recognition of judicial decisions, avoiding conflicts of jurisdiction,
improving exchange of information, etc. Criminal law is still subject to the
autonomous decision of the member states and not directly governed by EU
legislation. The legislative powers cover the territory of the autonomous
state and are generally bound to geographical borders. The resulting
differences in criminal law between countries represented in TITANIUM lead to
different obligations regarding the notification obligation within the
project. Following this principle of territoriality, cross-jurisdiction work
can result in different obligations depending on the consortium members
whereabouts. Most member states included an obligation to report criminal
activity through a crime of omission. The specific legal conditions for the
respective member states represented in TITANIUM are described in detail in
D1.9: OEI - Requirement No. 11, Procedure for Notification of Criminal
Activity. All members of the project are required to read and understand the
notification process as laid down in D1.9 carefully to be sufficiently
informed about their legal obligations in their context of work

In general, if a consortium member observes any criminal activity, whether it
is planned to be committed or has been committed, the member or participant

  1. must notify a competent authority, if the applicable national or international law stipulates an obligation to notification/notify. 

  

  2. shall not notify any authority, if the applicable law does not stipulate an obligation to notification. 

  

  

In all cases where notification was put into consideration or was conducted,
the consortium member will inform the project’s DPO pursuant to the procedure
described in detail in D1.9. The DPO will assist the partner in his/her
decision and in evaluating the necessity of authority notification. The
decision progress and reasoning for a notify/not-notify decision is tracked.
Tracking cases of obvious nonnotification is not foreseen. To avoid omission
of required notification, TITANIUM partners are trained and informed on a
regular basis to allow a correct first assessment of their notification
obligation in the concrete situation. While each consortium member is
individually liable to adhere to the national regulations, the projects legal
team and DPO will regularly inform and remind the consortium members about
their legal obligations to report certain criminal activity.

#  Legal and ethical Aspects

##  Data Collection, Exchange, and Access

Our data collection approach, both in terms of policy and implementation, is
itself a primary project outcome, and is being documented in various project
Deliverables, such as D2.1 (M12), D4.2 (M30), D4.3 (M24), D4.5 (M36), D5.3
(M30), D5.4 (M36), D5.5 (M30), and D5.6 (M36). We operate under a scientific
paradigm, which allows us to gather data for research purposes. **The data
will not be used for forensic purposes.**

Research data collection will at all times be constrained by the policies
elaborated in work packages 1 and 2, in particular through D1.1 (M1+updates),
D1.2 (M1+updates), D2.1 (M12), D2.3 (M18), and D4.1 (M18). In terms of data
collection, processing and retention we operate in accordance with the GDPR.
TITANIUM primarily processes pseudonymous data from public sources for
research purposes. As specified in our data protection statement on the
project website  3  , **all** data subjects have the right to request access
to and rectification or erasure of personal data or restriction of processing
concerning the data subject and to object to processing as well as the right
to data portability.

Legal and ethical issues related to the intended data collection, data
exchange, and access to relevant data by law enforcement through the TITANIUM
tools are addressed in WP2. Next to the legal issues, to various ethical
issues are being addressed in this context. In Deliverable D2.1 legal impacts
of TITANIUM as well as significant ethical issues are discussed more in
detail. Appropriate safeguards are proposed to minimise any negative impacts
of TITANIUM, while maintaining the operational excellence of the tools. In
terms of ethical issues, the technical requirements of TITANIUM tools should
at least address security, data minimisation, confidentiality, purpose-binding
(access control), and transparency (logging, integrity protection)
constraints.  4  Throughout the project, a value-sensitive design, ensuring
adequate ethical safeguards, is being pursued.  4

The current legal situation and open legal questions regarding data collection
of public data and the use of forensic tools to study the underground markets
is being analysed different technical solutions will be proposed and
implemented in WP4, in which tools and services for the automated collection
of multi-modal data are being developed. They will most probably relate to,
for instance, smart crawling technologies, on demand crawling (crawling only
if there is a specific suspicion) or archiving of the blockchain in a specific
situation, which will depend on the legal basis in the national laws of the
partners.

WP4 will implement **privacy-preserving control measures** into the TITANIUM
data collection tools/services to ensure compliance of the data collection
process with applicable privacy law. A practical privacy-aware control
structure for the operation of the tools will be developed (privacypreserving
data obfuscation tools; tuneable computing architectures for the various
planned machine learning components). With this control structure, it will be
possible to effectuate certain privacy legislation on the level of tool
operation.

**D4.1** (M18) describes the approach suggested by TITANIUM to minimize data
collection and storage when crawling Darkweb marketplaces and forums, with the
aim to respect the privacy of individuals as much as possible. The first and
most important concept of data minimization involves limiting the depth of
related entities that is presented to the end user (LEA officer). This is
relevant in a situation where a concrete starting point for an investigation
on dark web and/or related virtual currency information is used to
automatically crawl and scrape information. This concept is being implemented
in the so-called ‘ephemeral monitor’.

The second concept entails hiding all personally identifiable information by
recognizing them and encrypting them. Building upon the work of the FP7
project PRACTICE, it is acceptable (under the right circumstances) to encrypt
personal information and regard this encryption as ‘deleting personal
information’. The so-called persistent monitor will implement this data
minimization method and will act as a secure index to the ephemeral monitor.

As the TITANIUM tools are envisaged to be used under different legal bases, a
common configuration model will be developed. This model enforces the
compliance of tools with the specific requirements in every instantiation of
the TITANIUM tools where the country, case or suspicious facts, and legal
bases for data collection and sharing are known. The model may leverage
INTERPOL’s existing approach to data processing on a global stage. It includes
at least security, data minimization (confidentiality), purpose-binding
(access control), and transparency (logging, integrity protection)
constraints.

TITANIUM has been designed with a tools-only approach – that is, it will not
perform any lawenforcement functions, or provide direct data analysis or
forensic services for law enforcement, but rather it will conduct research to
develop forensic tools that will then be passed on to appropriate authorities
to use based upon their appropriate legal frameworks. The tools will be
designed to support their use in particular legal contexts, and at this point
any data collected by those tools will not be collected by the consortium, but
rather by enforcement where there is a clear legal basis - for example, in the
context of an ongoing investigation. The main purpose of data collection is to
fine-tune, train and test the algorithms of WP4 and WP5.

WP2 also analysed legal and ethical conditions for the conduct of the Field
Labs, in which TITANIUM data will be used and processed. The research focuses
on questions of a possible compliance of the planned field tests and developed
tools with EU data protection law, such as Directive (EU) 2016/680 on
processing of personal data in the law-enforcement sector, the General Data
Protection Regulation, where applicable, as well as Articles 7 and 8 of the
Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFR) and Article 8 of the
European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), Council of Europe Convention 108
from 1981 and Recommendation No. R (87) 15 and the respective case law of the
CJEU and the ECtHR. WP2 will assess if a legal basis exists to carry out the
field tests with real data, or if they can only be carried out based on the
use of synthetic data instead. To ensure compliance with national data
protection and criminal law provision, the WP2 team will closely cooperate
with national experts and data protection officers of the law enforcement
partners involved.

Relevant deliverables in this context are:

  * D1.3: POPD - Requirement No. 4 

  

  * D2.1: General legal, societal and ethical impacts of the TITANIUM tools [M12, KIT, Report] 

  

  * D2.2: Analysis of INTERPOL’s legal framework [M12, INT, Report] 

  

  * D2.3: Legal and ethical conditions for the conduct of the Field Lab tests [M18, KIT, Report] 

  

  * D2.4: Report on legal, societal and ethical impact assessment [M36, TRI, Report] 

  

  * D4.1: Privacy-preserving control techniques [M18, TNO, Software] 

  

  * D4.3: Adaptive data collection containers [M30, TNO, Software] 

  

##  Personal Data

Throughout the project lifetime, TITANIUM will use only publicly available
data (i.e. data published in virtual currency blockchains or on Internet dark
market sites) compliant with ethical, legal, social, and privacy/GDPR
regulations, or will make use of synthetic data (refer to Grant Agreement,
Part B, Section 5.1). The data will only be collected by researchers and for
research purposes, and not be used for forensic purposes.

However, TITANIUM's research methods will include the processing of three
categories of data which may raise personal data protection requirements; 1)
cryptocurrency data, and 2) other online data sources (e.g. darknet
markets/for a), 3) synthetic data on “local” digital forensic evidence.
TITANIUM does not envisage the use of real-world data in context of 3), and
this category of data does not therefore present data protection risks in this
project. The other aspects are being addressed in WP2.

TITANIUM will not process special categories of personal data (e.g., health,
sexual lifestyle, ethnicity, political opinion, religious or philosophical
conviction) within the meaning of the GDPR. This exemplary list is based on
Article 9 GDPR  5  that describes data that is deemed particularly sensitive
by the European legislator. TITANIUM implemented measures to exclude such data
from the processing during research as far as necessary. Cryptocurrency
transaction data, which is processed in context of TITANIUM, is not listed as
a special category of data. Nevertheless, financial transaction can be
“sensitive”. To determine the “sensitivity” of data, one must differ between
data that has deliberately been made available to the public by the data
subject and data that has not been made public by the data subject.

In the case of cryptocurrency transaction data, the data subject has a lowered
expectation that the transaction data is not accessed, seen, or even processed
by third parties. It is consensus that data that is voluntarily made public by
the data subject – be it on a blockchain, the darknet or the surface web – is
deemed less sensitive by the data subject than private (i.e. non-public) data.
The data subject voluntarily decided to make information publicly available
and can hence not expect that the data is not accessed/seen by the public  6
. The EU legislator has ever since followed, a “non-paternalistic” approach
that allows data subject to decide freely about how to make use of their data.
As a consequence, **the data subject is required to individually evaluate the
risks of their actions (i.e. publication of data)** . To ensure the data
subject is able to enforce its decisions the GDPR implemented a broad range of
measures to enforce the decisions (e.g. rectification, erasure, information).

Accordingly, **participants of blockchain based cryptocurrencies can be
expected to be aware of the public availability of their transaction data and
potential further processing** . Public transaction data is hence deemed less
sensitive than e.g. FIAT transactions. Cryptocurrency users have a lower
expectation of sensitivity of their transaction data – that **does not** mean
they have a lowered expectation of anonymity. In contrast, transactions with
FIAT money are subject to an expectation of sensitivity/confidentiality but
not to anonymity in relation to banking services. The data subject does not
expect anybody else except the bank and the receiver to see/process his
transaction data. In such cases, the transaction data is deemed more sensitive
7  . Expectations towards **accessibility and re-use of published data** by
users need to be differentiated from their **privacy** **expectations** . In
the given context, the latter describes the users’ expectation that his
publicly available data cannot be traced back to him/her. This difference also
exists – and may be more comprehensible – in the context of the darknet
content. In this case, the user has a very high privacy expectation (i.e.
expectation to remain anonymous). She does not have a high expectation that
her postings and comments on a publicly accessible webpage remain unseen by
the public eye  8  . This, of course, does not hold true for closed
communities, where the author only expects a specific group or person to see
his post/comment/message. TITANIUM does **not** access closed communities or
private communication.

To support this, there is a long line of jurisdiction  9  as well as scholarly
debate not only in the EU but also in the US how far-reaching privacy
expectations of the data subjects are in other public contexts. While these
sources are not particularly aimed at publicly available data from the
blockchain or the darknet, the comparison shows that legislation and
jurisdiction currently do not particularly restrict access to publicly
available data and expect data subjects to be sufficiently careful which
information they provide. With regard to scientific data processing this
“mindset” can also be observed in other legal contexts, e.g. in the novel
copyright directive (EU 2019/790), that constitutes an exemption for text and
data mining for scientific purposes with regard to potential copyright
infringements.

Having said that, the public availability of data does not make them a “carte
blanche” for data processing. The privacy concerns (i.e. the wish to remain
anonymous) of the users must be heard and addressed in the research context,
and research projects must adhere to the high data protection standards of the
GDPR. The GDPR generally privileges data processing for scientific purposes
and sets ups specific rules for data that is not obtained from the data
subject, as is the case in TITANIUM. The data processing (collection and
analysis) is based on Art. 6 (1) lit. f GDPR. In compliance with the GDPR,
TITANIUM informs the affected data subjects pursuant to Art. 14 (1) GDPR in an
easily understandable manner. This means that people are informed about the
project’s activities on its public website in a specific privacy statement, in
news and updates on the findings and with references to scientific
publications. To support this, the consortium created an “easy-to-read”
version of its privacy statement to ensure everyone is able to understand the
projects goals and approaches. Further, the projects partners are in touch
with the relevant communities to ensure all interests are considered. With
regard to privacy expectations of the affected data subjects two points need
to be noted. First, TITANIUM respects the wish of users to remain anonymous
and does not identify individual users neither in cryptocurrency nor in
darknet context.

Second, TITANIUM does not identify itself as an antagonist to the
cryptocurrency or the darknet communities. On the contrary, the project
produces novel valuable insights on possible analysis techniques of
cryptocurrency protocols and the darknet, helping the communities to
understand the risks of cryptocurrencies and tackle false expectations of
anonymity. TITANIUM participates in the ongoing discussion on how to handle
publicly available data and how to protect the privacy of the data subjects
not only by publishing research on legal, ethical, societal and technical
outcomes of the project but is also in continuous communication with relevant
stakeholders such as the cryptocurrency communities, civil society
organisations, banking officials and law enforcement agencies as part of D2.4
(PIA+) to ensure all interests are sufficiently put into consideration.

In conclusion, TITANIUM complies with the current legal and ethical framework
and additionally puts immense effort in balancing the interests of
cryptocurrency and darknet users, the science community and law enforcement
beyond the legal requirements that currently govern the use of publicly
available data. For the DMP (D8.2) the current legal and ethical situation is
decisive and must be distinguished from parallel (scholarly) discussions  10
that are led on legal, ethical and societal level.  12  If additional
sensitive personal data not covered by the above-named examples arise, we will
determine how to process/delete/anonymise it. This will be carried out in the
context of WP2 and under supervision of the DPO and the Ethics Advisory Board
(EAB).

TITANIUM will not transfer any personal data to non-EU countries. Based on the
findings in Task 2.2 on the INTERPOL framework, a transfer of some data via
INTERPOL might be considered. In general terms INTERPOL’s role is not as an
investigatory agency but rather a support to its member countries so the
countries remain in control of the data processed by INTERPOL with some
exceptions.

TITANIUM has set up a Data Protection Notification Procedure (refer to D1.1:
POPD - Requirement No. 1) and has nominated a Data Protection Officer (Refer
to D1.2: POPD - Requirement No. 2).

##  Informed Consent Procedure

In context of the data collected in the interviews to be done in the Field
Labs (WP6) **informed consent documentation** will be collected from the Field
Lab participants (refer to Grant Agreement, Part B, Section 5.1). The informed
consent form will be designed in D1.7 and WP2 (Task 2.3).

TITANIUM anticipates collecting the following personal data from participants:

  * Name - necessary to ensure that informed consent has been acquired from all participants. Interview transcripts will be anonymised. 

  

  * Job title/role - necessary for the analysis of the use of the TITANIUM tools by different roles within the LEA organisations. 

  

  * Contact email address - necessary to keep participants updated about the progress of the field labs, and any changes in research practices. 

  

##  Ethics Advisory Board

TITANIUM constituted an independent Ethics Advisory Board, who will have
access to TITANIUM's activities and all deliverables. It will supervise data
collection and processing and advise about potential impacts on human rights.
TITANIUM partners will inform and consult with the EAB when it comes to the
processing of research data and to assess if whether the datasets contain
sensitive or personal data.