Visible to the public Designing for Privacy - January 2022Conflict Detection Enabled

Submitted by Serge Egelman on Wed, 03/09/2022 - 3:20pm

PI(s), Co-PI(s), Researchers:

  • Serge Egelman (ICSI)
  • Alisa Frik (ICSI - now on leave)
  • Julia Bernd (ICSI)

HARD PROBLEM(S) ADDRESSED
Human Behavior, Policy-Governed Secure Collaboration

PUBLICATIONS

  • Our paper on "Users' Expectations About and Use of Smartphone Privacy and Security Settings", which we described in our previous reports, was accepted for ACM CHI this spring:
    • Alisa Frik, Juliann Kim, Joshua Rafael Sanchez, and Joanne Ma. 2022. Users' Expectations About and Use of Smartphone Privacy and Security Settings. Proceedings of the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New Orleans, LA, USA, April 30 - May 5, 2022 (CHI '22). To appear.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

  • Our paper on "Users' Expectations About and Use of Smartphone Privacy and Security Settings", which we described in our previous reports, was accepted for ACM CHI this spring.

  • As mentioned in our October report, we have been preparing papers based on our interviews with nannies about their experiences with smart home devices (in collaboration with a colleague at Kings College London).

  • We have completed a paper entitled "Balancing Power Dynamics in Smart Homes: Nannies' Perspectives on How Cameras Reflect and Affect Relationships" and submitted it to SOUPS 2022. (Authors Julia Bernd, Ruba Abu-Salma, Junghyun Choy, and Alisa Frik.) It suggests technical and non-technical privacy interventions to mitigate the effects of camera data collection about domestic workers, given the complex context of the employer-employee relationship and its attendant power dynamics. We believe that expanding the space of designing for smart home privacy to accommodate bystanders with complex relationships to the devices' primary user(s) will require attention to both technical and non-technical factors -- and to the interaction between them.

    • Abstract: Smart home devices such as cameras raise privacy concerns in part because they frequently collect data not only about the primary users who deployed them, but also other parties---who may be targets of intentional surveillance or incidental bystanders. Domestic employees working in smart homes must navigate a complex context that blends privacy and social norms for homes, workplaces, and caregiving situations. This paper presents findings from 25 semi-structured interviews with domestic childcare workers in the U.S. about smart home cameras, focusing on how privacy considerations interact with the dynamics of their employer--employee relationships. We show how participants' views about camera data collection, and their desire and ability to set conditions on data use and sharing, are affected by power differentials and by norms about who should decide how information flows in a given context. Participants' attitudes about employers' cameras often hinged on how employers used the data; whether participants viewed camera use as likely to reinforce negative tendencies in the employer--employee relationship; and how camera use and disclosure might reflect existing relationship tendencies, positive or negative. The paper also suggests technical and social interventions to mitigate the adverse effects of power imbalances on domestic employees' privacy and individual agency.

  • We are also working on a second paper focusing on the differences in nannies' privacy perspectives on cameras vs. other smart home devices such as smart speakers, given the different threat models involved (i.e. hingeing on whether or not their employer receives and uses the data), and the design implications of this wide variation in context-dependent privacy perspectives across device types. This will be submitted to (Po)PETS.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENTS

  • Nothing to report this quarter.

EDUCATIONAL ADVANCES:

  • These projects involved multiple undergraduate and graduate students.

Groups: