Living with interpersonal data: observability and accountability in the age of pervasive ICT

The Internet of Things, alongside existing mobile digital technologies, heralds a world in which pervasive sensing constantly captures data about us. Simultaneous with this technology programme are moves by policymakers to shore up the digital economy through the legislating of new trust-building models of data management. These moves seek to give individuals control and oversight of their personal data. Within shared settings, the consequences of these changes are the large-scale generation of interpersonal data generated by and acting on the group rather than individual. We consider how such systems create new forms of observability and hence accountability among members of the home, and draw on the work of Simmel and Goffman to explore how these demands are managed. Such management mitigates the more extreme possibilities for domestic monitoring posited by these systems, yet without careful design there remains a considerable danger of unanticipated negative consequences

Realising the right to data portability for the domestic Internet of Things

There is an increasing role for the IT design community to play in regulation of emerging IT. Article 25 of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2016 puts this on a strict legal basis by establishing the need for information privacy by design and default (PbD) for personal data-driven technologies. Against this backdrop, we examine legal, commercial and technical perspectives around the newly created legal right to data portability (RTDP) in GDPR. We are motivated by a pressing need to address regulatory challenges stemming from the Internet of Things (IoT). We need to find channels to support the protection of these new legal rights for users in practice. In Part I we introduce the internet of things and information PbD in more detail. We briefly consider regulatory challenges posed by the IoT and the nature and practical challenges surrounding the regulatory response of information privacy by design. In Part II, we look in depth at the legal nature of the RTDP, determining what it requires from IT designers in practice but also limitations on the right and how it relates to IoT. In Part III we focus on technical approaches that can support the realisation of the right. We consider the state of the art in data management architectures, tools and platforms that can provide portability, increased transparency and user control over the data flows. In Part IV, we bring our perspectives together to reflect on the technical, legal and business barriers and opportunities that will shape the implementation of the RTDP in practice, and how the relationships may shape emerging IoT innovation and business models. We finish with brief conclusions about the future for the RTDP and PbD in the IoT

Enhancing consent forms to support participant decision making in multimodal learning data research

Advances in the field of multimodal learning analytics (MMLA) research is often accomplished by actively exploring new technologies and techniques related to the collection and analysis of data. Exploration of ethical principles and procedures for governing the use of new technologies and techniques, however, is not as readily pursued. As collected data grow in complexity and invasiveness, potentially, a growing need is arising to scrutinize ethical aspects of MMLA research. In our study, we introduce an informed consent comprehension test for educational technology research and assess the effects of enhancing MMLA consent forms on comprehension of informed consent and on rates of enrollment in a MMLA study. One form is written from a researcher perspective and the other from a participant perspective. Results of the study involving first‐year undergraduate students suggest that the overall level of comprehension did not differ between conditions. Yet, the participant‐oriented consent form resulted in significantly lower rates of enrollment. Implications for MMLA researchers are discussed.This work was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under MDM-2015-0502, TIN2017-85179-C3-3-R. D. Hernández-Leo acknowledges financial support by ICREA under the ICREA Academia programme