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© The Authors. Proceedings of British
HCI 2016 - Fusion, Bournemouth, UK
Bystander Privacy in Lifelogging
Soumyadeb Chowdhury Md Sadek Ferdous Joemon M Jose
Singapore Institute of Technology University of Southampton University of Glasgow
Soum.Chowdhury@singaporetech.edu.sg S.Ferdous@soton.ac.uk Joemon.Jose@glasgow.ac.uk
Lifelogging, a technique for digitally gathering every moment in life using wearable cameras, is a growing
phenomenon. However, it is important to remember that in addition to recording their own lives, users are
recording others as well, which raises privacy issues around lifelogging from a bystander’s perspective.
This warrants conducting bystander-focused privacy studies in an uncontrolled environment, by reaping
upon the experience of practitioners from multiple domains, but not limited to, urban science, sociology,
privacy, usability, psychology, and law, to design such studies.
Lifelogging, Privacy, Bystander, Experiment Design, Society
1. INTRODUCTION
Lifelogging wearable cameras such as Autographer
(Autographer, 2009) and Narrative Clip (Narrative
clip, 2012) passively capture photos at a very high
rate– Autographer (100-200 images per hour) and
Narrative Clip (120 images per hour). These
photographs consist of comprehensive records of
users’ daily activities (Gurrin, 2014). However, it is
important to note that in addition to recording their
own lives, users are recording others as well. This
intrusive and invasive nature of lifelogging has
understandably drawn the attention of advocates of
personal privacy in different domains. The photos
may be captured in different settings/scenarios
including, but not limited to private (living room),
intimate (time spent with loved ones), corporate
(workplace). Hence it is necessary to understand the
privacy implications of the lifelog images from the
perspectives of both the lifeloggers (LLs, i.e. person
wearing the device) and bystanders (BSs i.e. known
or unknown people captured in the photographs).
The use of wearable cameras thus raise serious
questions of permission from the BSs, especially if
the photos are eventually published.
To the best of our knowledge, none of the existing
studies have focused on the privacy of the
bystanders. Some practitioners have suggested that
the privacy of the lifeloggers is more important than
that of bystanders (Lifelogging, 2016). However,
there are no research evidence to support such a
suggestion. The right to privacy is one of the
fundamental human rights in any modern society. It
advocates and facilitates mechanisms to uphold the
privacy of all individuals within the society. However,
what is private is highly debated because there are
social, legal, political, technical and psychological
connotations to privacy (Gurrin et al., 2014).
In this paper, we contend that it is necessary to
conduct longitudinal lifelogging user studies in the
natural environment of the LLs to better understand
the privacy concerns raised by the BSs. Our
contention is based upon the anecdotal evidence
gathered from a study conducted in the United
Kingdom (Glasgow), where a number of BSs (who
were either known or unknown to the LLs) had
raised privacy concerns. This evidence might be
considered a bit conflicting compared to the results
reported in (Hoyle et al., 2014), but it clearly
demonstrates a knowledge gap in the context of
lifelogging privacy, which warrants a systematic
investigation.
2. RELATED STUDIES
From a legal perspective, Allen (2008) has
suggested that lifelogs should not be recorded
without the explicit permission of the bystanders,
and has proposed a counter-technology to block
lifelog surveillance, but did not provide any guidance
on how to implement such a technology. Kelly et al.
(2013) have suggested that privacy and anonymity
of third parties must be protected and image
containing third parties should not be published
without their prior consent. The most recent work
reported in Hoyle et al. (2014 and 2015) have
studied the reactions of the bystanders from a LL’s
perspective. The study demonstrated that 26 out of
36 LLs reported positive interest from the BSs, and
none of the LLs reported to have encountered
opposition from the BSs. We believe that these
results are likely to vary for each study, and may
depend upon the surroundings (when and where a
wearable device is used) and the frequency of use.
For example, there is a difference between using the
device in solitude, among a group of classmates (in
class), group of strangers, or inside a business
Bystander Privacy in Lifelogging, Chowdhury Ferdous Jose
seminar. We also contend that perceptions about
privacy infringements is likely to vary from one
individual to another, individual across different age
groups, and privacy laws enforced in a country.
3. EVALUATION
We recruited 40 LLs (subjects in this case) by
sending emails to the university mailing list, once
ethics approval was granted by the ethics committee
to conduct the study. The LLs were asked to use a
wearable camera, “Autographer”, for a period of 3
days (6-8 hours every day). The devices were
handed over for a week, to give some slack time to
the LLs to get used to the devices. LLs were also
provided with an instruction sheet to help them use
the devices. Additionally, a list of suggestions were
provided in order to reduce the potential risks arising
from our study. The suggestions included, but were
not limited to: (1) avoiding using the device in rest
rooms and in places where photography may be
prohibited; (2) if a bystander enquires about the
device, first the image capture must be paused, and
then the objectives of our study must be explained;
(3) if a bystander seems to be concerned, then step
2 should be followed and they should be provided
with our contact information, as well as a URL
containing further details about our project. The LLs
were also asked to note down the date and time of
the incident in a deletion card, so that we were able
to delete the images captured for that period of time.
This framework ensured that the study reflected the
way these devices will be actually used in real-life.
After the study, semi-structured interviews were
conducted with the LLs to understand the reactions
of the bystanders. A majority of the LLs participating
in our study (29 out of 40) had reported that people
they lived with, i.e. either their family members or
flatmates enquired about the device (in particular
about characteristics of the device). A majority (i.e.
around 85%) of the flatmates, and family members
were not in favour of using the device inside the
shared flat. They were concerned about: how the
lifelogs will portray themselves; location where the
contents will be stored; how the contents will be
used; what sort of activities will be captured,
especially when the device is either used in the
private space or homely environment. 18 LLs had
reported that their colleagues in the workplace
enquired about the device, and requested the LLs to
avoid using the device during office hours. There
were 9 instances, where the line manager explicitly
asked the LLs to avoid using the lifelogging cameras
during the office hours, and in the business
gatherings, though there were no policies set by the
organization to prevent people from taking pictures,
during office hours (according to the LLs). It was also
reported that 12 bystanders (unknown people in
public transport, and shopping stores), enquired
about the device, and showed discontent and
concern after hearing its characteristics. The
bystanders politely requested the lifeloggers to
delete their photographs, because they did not like
to the idea of being randomly photographed. These
bystanders also told that they felt as if they were
being tracked. The LLs also pointed out that the
attitude of the people towards privacy seemed to
depend upon: (1) the ability to identify the camera on
the body (i.e. visibility of the device); (2) what sort of
information about the wearable is provided during
the enquiry, and how this information is described.
Thus the experimental protocol used for a study may
also influence the perception of the public. In
summary, the bystanders were concerned about: (1)
self-impression management, how they are being
represented in the lifelogs, (2) being tracked, i.e.
identified being at a certain place engaged in certain
activities; (3) how the lifelogs can be changed to give
a negative impression about them (or activities).
4. CONCLUSION
The recent advances in pervasive sensing,
especially wearable cameras have raised privacy
concerns, especially from the perspectives of the
BSs. We do not claim that our study with LLs is
rigorous, but contend that the results underscore the
need for further studies with BSs to understand their
concerns. But in order to conduct the studies, and
make them comprehensive, and comparable, it is
necessary to establish an evaluation protocol
comprising of a set of common guidelines. This set
of guidelines would need to address issues such as:
consistent way of designing experiments; protocols
to be used, i.e. minimum duration of study, metric to
be reported, interpretation of metrics; type of training
to be given before starting the experiment, where to
place the device on the body; instructions for the LLs
during exigencies. This will help to establish a
common set of criteria that can be used to compare
the results obtained in a study and demonstrate its
viability in a specific context. Practitioners and
experts from multiple domains such as security,
legal, privacy, urban sciences, and psychology,
should come together to establish rules for effective
experimental design to conduct lifelogging privacy
studies, which can be adopted in the future. By
taking such steps, we can: (1) edge closer to design
and development of a privacy-preserving lifelogging
system that protects the privacy as well security of
the bystanders; (2) understand the societal and
urban aspects negatively influencing the acceptance
of such technologies.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors acknowledge support from Integrated
Multimedia City Data (iMCD), a project within the
ESRC-funded Urban Big Data Centre
(ES/L011921/1).
Bystander Privacy in Lifelogging, Chowdhury Ferdous Jose
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