Rethinking Privacy Policies in Location-Aware Systems: Bridging the Gaps Getween Users Applications, and Policy Systems

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

This project will seek ways to greatly simplify privacy policy creation for users. It is based on the premise that the use of contextual information from applications that help users to coordinate or communicate with others - such as their calendar, messaging contacts, and address books - can help in creating privacy policies for location-aware systems. In contrast to earlier work on privacy that focused on such location-independent applications as Web services, the focus in this project is primarily on privacy in location-aware systems where users carry devices that help determine their location. These include GPS-enabled cell phones, wireless PDAs, and laptops. This work will leverage a location-aware infrastructure called Whereabouts, which is deployed in the new Computer Science and Engineering building of the University of Michigan. This research integrates three key concepts to simplify privacy policy specifications: (1) Privacy meta-policies: These are high-level rules that help map a user's context information. For example, a rule may make the user's location available to meeting participants near the start time of a scheduled meeting. (2) Privacy circles: These structures help users share privacy meta-policies with other users. The research will evaluate the hypothesis that privacy meta-policies will be much easier to share than low-level policy preferences that are typically available in existing privacy systems for ubiquitous computing. (3) Privacy mirrors: These are tools to help users understand the impact of their privacy meta-policies. In particular, a user can use a privacy mirror to see how a set of meta-policies would have revealed their location to other users for past events or scheduled future events. The success of this work will help users coordinate and collaborate better with each other using location information, while safeguarding privacy. This is important, because location-aware computing infrastructures are starting to become widely available, but they have still not penetrated mainstream use. Better calendaring and coordination tools will also result from this research, and it will help push the frontiers on understanding how people can better manage their privacy in the context of location-aware systems.