HCC: Privacy in Home-Based Ubicomp

Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Abstract

This project addresses the acute privacy challenge of home-based health care based on ubiquitous computing, or ubicomp, where vulnerable populations risk enforced technological intimacy. It will employ the well-defined ""design for values"" method to create an innovative toolkit that can be used by our aging population, their caregivers, and designers to ensure privacy and autonomy in home-based ubicomp. Ubiquitous computing integrates technology into our everyday environments, fundamentally altering privacy by creating continuous, detailed data flows. Ubicomp will result in an environment that is aware, active and responsive. It creates an aware environment through the pervasive distribution of sensors. It is active because sensor data are processed and examined. It is responsive in that the technology acts on the environment based on processed data. As ubicomp is networked, the data and decisions have the potential to be observed from any connected locale on the planet. Design for privacy is complicated by the fact that privacy is a socially constructed value that differs significantly across environments and individuals. Currently, design for privacy requires a user who understands the social implications of ubicomp technology, demands a design that respects privacy, and articulates specific technical design requirements. Design for privacy also requires a ubicomp designer with mastery of privacy enhancing technologies, security mechanisms, and a profound understanding of privacy. Neither of these is a reasonable burden. This research will decrease the burdens for both parties. This project will create a system for designing highly customized privacy¬-enhancing ubicomp. The privacy framework that consists of three integrated, complementary components. The first component is a participant tool for eliciting individual elder privacy concerns, making it easy for non-technical people to express privacy concerns. The second is a designer tool that translates elder concerns into technical choices or suggestions. The third is a privacy-enhancing code library for ubicomp sensors that vastly simplifies privacy-sensitive design, including data filtering, access control list creation, and integration of cryptographic privacy enhancing technologies. The broader impacts of the project include: (1) development of multidisciplinary curriculum that will engage over 40 students in the research project; (2) a living laboratory to enable research and curricular activities in business, nursing, health and other disciplines; (3) expansion of the potential for privacy-enhanced home-based healthcare; (4) the development of tools to ensure that older people make their own choices about home monitoring and protection of their privacy and autonomy, and (5) a design tool and code library that enable ubicomp designers to easily embed appropriate privacy-enhancing and strong security-protecting mechanisms in home-based ubicomp without requiring expertise in privacy or security.