Context Awareness and Privacy in Collaborative Environments

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Context Awareness and Privacy in Collaborative
Environments

• Guest Lecturer Shinichi Konomi
• konomi_at_colorado.edu

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Outline

• What is context?
• Examples
• How should context be used to support
  collaboration?
• More discussions on context
• Privacy issues
• Summary

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Ubiquitous Computing

• Invisible, everywhere computing
• First articulated by Mark Weiser in 1988
• Third wave in computing
• Mainframes ? PCs ? ubiquitous computing
• Ubiquitous computing v.s. virtual reality
• Virtual reality
• Horse power problem
• Ubiquitous computing
• Challenging integration of human factors,
  computer science, engineering and social sciences
• Various use settings (location, time, tasks,) ?
  Unique opportunities and challenges of using
  context

Original graphics at http//www.ubiq.com
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What is context?
A context-aware cell phone
Noisy hallway
Movie theater
silent mode
RING!! RING!! RING!!
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What is context?
Definition based on (Dey, Abowd, Salber, 2001)
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Examples of context-aware systems

• Meeting support
• Smart tour guides
• Information services for commuters
• Smart care
• Displaying social context at an academic
  conference
• Store of the Future
• Online medical cabinet and wardrobe

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Meeting support

• Sample Scenarios
• People enter a meeting
• room ? a meeting agenda
• automatically shown on the
• wall-sized screen
• Person A stands near the
• screen and puts a physical
• token on the blue area
• his data appear on the screen
• Person B and C move theirchairs so they can see
  eachother ? a collaboration toolautomatically
  launched on the chair computers

http//www.roomware.de
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Tour guides

• Campus Aware (Cornell University)
• Learning, planning and navigating

Users locations and how much they liked each
location (color-coded) ? Social Navigation
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Information services for commuters
(1) On the train (to work) Todays events and
news
(2) Walking (to work) Area Info (places to eat,
etc.)
Movie discount Only 10! Tomorrow is the monthly
movie discount day
Gourmet Info FullBelly Café (Chinese Noodle /
Shinjuku) Their special is worth taking a look

• Odakyu News
• Hakone ropeway introduces a new gondola car
• a Swiss-made cute gondola

Psychology Test You have a pet bug. Which one is
it? (1) beetle (2) grasshopper (3) butterfly
(3) On the train (to home) Entertaining contents
to relax
(4) Walking (to home) Newsletter from the train
company
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Elder care support for cognitively handicapped
people
CLever (Mobility for All, Lifeline, MAPS, )
(Zojirushi)
A glove for an elder (Intel) Detects touched
household objects
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Supporting social interactions at an academic
conference

• Peoples presence as context
• System shows invisible connections between users
• Enriched social context for human-human
  communication
• Supporting social interactions
• Start a conversation with a stranger
• Find common topics of conversation
• Find something you didnt know about you and your
  friend
• Technology
• RFID chips in nametags (linked to an academic
  publication database)
• Shows invisible strings that connect you and
  the other person
• Common coauthors
• Common coauthors coauthors
• Common academic conferences
• People who cited past publications of the two

RFID reader
RFID reader
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Links connecting two researchers
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(No Transcript)
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Store of the Future
User identification Location/map Smart
shelf Kiosk Ad display Budget critics Alert
(prescription drugs) Cashiers
Future Store (Rheinberg, Germany) http//www.futur
e-store.org/
Shopping Buddy (Kingston, MA ) http//www.kioskbus
iness.com/janfeb_03/article1.html http//www.cbsne
ws.com/stories/2003/08/11/earlyshow/contributors/l
auriehibberd/main567720.shtml
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Future Store (video)
http//www.future-store.org/servlet/PB/menu/100219
7_l2/index.html
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Online Wardrobe
http//www.accenture.com/xd/xd.asp?itenwebxdser
vices5Ctechnology5Cvision5Csil_what.xml
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Online Medicine Cabinet
http//www.accenture.com/xd/xd.asp?itenwebxdser
vices5Ctechnology5Cvision5Csil_what.xml
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Enabling technologies

• GPS (Global Positioning System)
• RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)
• read and write, unique Identification, read many
  at once, line of sight not required
• Active and passive tags Different frequency
  bands
• Sensors
• Infrared, ultrasound, temperature, light,
  vibration, vision, sound, etc.
• Wireless networks
• Wireless LAN, Bluetooth, Ultra Wide Band, Near
  Field Communication, etc.
• Information appliances
• Data management systems (middleware and
  databases)
• data avalanche ? Much more than 5
  Exabytes/year (2002)
• Software development platforms (e.g.,
  GeorgiaTechs Context Toolkit)

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Lessons learned so farPrada Epicenter
(Manhattan, NYC)
(Busuness 2.0, March 2004 issue)
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How should context be used to support
collaboration?

• Creating context-aware applications is not an end
  in itself, but it is a means to an end.
• How can contextual information empower users to
  live, work, learn, and collaborate more easily
  and more productively?

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Beyond location awareness

• One of the simplest location-aware systems
• Can we go beyond that? What are possibilities and
  challenges?
• How can we capture the larger (often
  unarticulated) context of what users are doing?
• How can we increase the richness of resources
  available for computer programs to understand
  their uses?

GPS
(40N,74W)
Nearby restaurants
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What is context, really?

• Many conventional systems are limited by the
  designers simplistic definitions/views of
  context
• Defining context is not easy
• Context is dynamic
• Context emerges throughout the design process
• Context plays a critical role in shaping,
  interpreting and understanding an action
• Users are situated in some settings of people,
  places, and things Features of the world become
  context through their use
• How can we build better context-aware
  applications based on these considerations?

c.f., Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, Vol.
16. Special Issue on Context-aware Computing.
Laurence Erlbaum Associates, 2001
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Context, context, context
buildings and architecture
physical, device, and informational context
temporal, attentional, social, organizational
context
c.f., Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, Vol.
16. Special Issue on Context-aware Computing.
Laurence Erlbaum Associates, 2001
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Unarticulated design intent

• A large fraction of context-relevant information
  cannot be inferred from the environment because
  the context resides outside the environment, is
  unarticulated, or exists only in the head of a
  designer.
• If a system provides mechanisms to articulate
  intentions explicitly and designers are willing
  to do so, the additional context can be used to
  identify the breakdown situation and provide
  designers with opportunities for reflection and
  learning.
• (G. Fischer et al., 2004)

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Making context-aware systems usable and useful

• Context awareness 1 anytime/anywhere
• Context awareness 2 right thing at the right
  time in the right way
• Information work is often fragmented (people
  change working spheres)
• Challenge for context awareness is to enable
  people to integrate their information
• Context awareness 3 The right thing at the
  right time in the right way with the right kind
  of integration
• (G. Mark 2004)

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Privacy Issues

• Systems that monitor users (and tailor services )
  may violate users privacy
• Consumer tracking via item-level RFID tagging
• Tracking school kids with GPS and RFID

Information about RFID privacy and security
(including cryptography ) see http//www.rsasecuri
ty.com/rsalabs/rfid/index.asp
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Example tracking school children

• Recent pilot tests
• - Rikkyo Elementary School, Tokyo
• - Iwamura Elementary School, Gifu
• Kakogawa Daycare Center, Hyogo
• (California)

• Location, identity, time
• Surveillance camera
• Historical data

No tracking
Pervasive tracking
?
Privacy and freedom
Safety, peace of mind
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RFID and privacy existing approaches

• Killing tags
• Faraday cage
• Active jamming
• Sophisticated tags
• Blocker tags
• Local computation
• Information management
• Social regulation

Mostly technologies for isolation
People Things
Network
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What is privacy?

• Traditional view
• the right to be left alone
• Alternative view (Altman, 1975 Palen and
  Dourish, 2003)
• selective control of access to the self (or to
  ones group)

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Towards a new class of privacy-enhancing
technologies
Network
People Things
Privacy problems
control
Network
Network
People Things
People Things
B. Technologies for boundary control
A. Technologies for isolation
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Designing for privacy the feedback-control
approach

• Designing for privacy in multimedia, ubiquitous
  computing environments (Bellotti and Sellen,
  1993)
• Key issue appropriate feedback and control

Capture
Existence of tags/readers, Occurrences of scans,
Who?, What?, When?
Existence of database records, Stored?,
Copied?, Integrated? Where? How?
Construction
Removing tags, Which readers?, Anonymity and
pseudonymity
Modifying database records, Restricting
operations, Permissions, Supervision
When and who accessed my information on RFID
tags, readers, and database records
Accessibility
Purposes
Why? Privacy policies, Inferred purposes
Social control with technological support
(e.g., something like P3P)
Access control, Authentication, Encryption
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Technology support is necessary but not sufficient

• Practical privacy is shaped by four strongly
  interacting forces (Lessig 1998)
• Markets
• Social norms
• Legislation
• Technology

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Related issues

• Trust
• Security
• Contextual factors
• locations, personal preferences, cultural
  differences
• "The fundamental thing about technology is that
  there needs to be cooperation as never before
  between governments, consumers and vendors"
  "Consumers cannot be passive. They have to state
  their rights and how they wanted to be
  protected." (Art Coviello, RSA)

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Conclusion

• Context and privacy are both elusive concepts
  difficult to define precisely.
• Where is a practical middle ground? And how do we
  find it?

Opportunities
Privacy