Bootstrapping opportunistic networks using social roles

Opportunistic routing protocols can enable message delivery in disconnected networks of mobile devices. To conserve energy in mobile environments, such routing protocols must minimise unnecessary message-forwarding. This paper presents an opportunistic routing protocol that leverages social role information. We compute node roles from a social network graph to identify nodes with similar contact relationships, and use these roles to determine routing decisions. By using pre-existing social network information, such as online social network friends, to determine roles, we show that our protocol can bootstrap a new opportunistic network without the delay incurred by encounter-history-based routing protocols such as SimbetTS. Simulations with four real-world datasets show improved performance over SimbetTS, with performance approaching Epidemic routing in some scenarios.Postprin

Understanding ethical concerns in social media privacy studies

There are myriad ethical considerations with conducting social media studies, in particular those investigating privacy concerns in such sites. We are interested in understanding how to address these concerns, and in particular wish to discuss our empirical work at this workshop and how to progress further in this space.Postprin

Less is more: energy-efficient mobile sensing with SenseLess

Workshop held as part of ACM SIGCOMM 2009We present SenseLess, a system that leverages the different energy consumption characteristics of sensors to maximise battery life in mobile-sensing applications. We use the less expensive sensors more often, thereby enabling us to use the more expensive sensors less frequently. In the context of location-aware services, experimental results indicate that for a typical indoor and outdoor walk, compared to a simple GPS-based system, our SenseLess system can reduce energy consumption by more than 58% when determining a user's location, while maintaining the fidelity of the sensed data. This extends the battery life of a typical handheld device from 9 hours to 22 hours.Postprin

Contextual consent: ethical mining of social media for health research

Social media are a rich source of insight for data mining and user centred research, but the question of consent arises when studying such data without the express knowledge of the creator. Case studies that mine social data from users of online services such as Facebook and Twitter are becoming increasingly common. This has led to calls for an open discussion into how researchers can best use these vast resources to make innovative findings while still respecting fundamental ethical principles. In this position paper we highlight some key considerations for this topic and argue that the conditions of informed consent are often not being met, and that using social media data that some deem free to access and analyse may result in undesirable consequences, particularly within the domain of health research and other sensitive topics. We posit that successful exploitation of online personal data, particularly for health and other sensitive research, requires new and usable methods of obtaining consent from the user.Publisher PD

The Right to Data Portability in practice : Exploring the implications of the technologically neutral GDPR

Key Points The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduces one new data subject right, Article 20’s right to data portability (RtDP). The RtDP aims to allow data subjects to obtain and reuse their personal data for their own purposes across different services. We investigate the RtDP by making 230 real-world data portability requests across a wide range of data controllers. The RtDP is interesting to study as it operates under a framework that aims to be technologically neutral while requiring specific technologies for implementation. Our objective is to assess the ease of the RtDP process from the perspective of the data subject and to examine the file formats returned by data controllers. From our results, including responses indicating that no personal data were stored, only 172 (74.8 per cent) of RtDP requests were successfully completed. However, compliance with the GDPR varied where not all file formats meet the GDPR requirements. There was also confusion amongst data controllers about data subject rights more generally. Based on our observations, we revisit the current guidance for data portability. We suggest new technical definitions to clarify how data should be made portable and determine the appropriateness of certain file formats for different data types. We suggest recommendations and future work for various stakeholders to address the legal implications derived from our study. This includes discussing possibilities for new data portability standards and codes, conducting further empirical research, and building technological solutions to ensure that the RtDP can be better understood in theory and exercised in practice.PostprintPeer reviewe

Co-creating autonomy : group data protection and individual self-determination within a data commons

Recent privacy scandals such as Cambridge Analytica and the Nightingale Project show that data sharing must be carefully managed and regulated to prevent data misuse. Data protection law, legal frameworks, and technological solutions tend to focus on controller responsibilities as opposed to protecting data subjects from the beginning of the data collection process. Using a case study of how data subjects can be better protected during data curation, we propose that a co-created data commons can protect individual autonomy over personal data through collective curation and rebalance power between data subjects and controllers.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Data portability as a tool for audit

Pervasive systems are almost omnipresent in their collection andprocessing of personal data. Understanding what these systems ar edoing is essential for trust, and to ensure that data being collected are accurate. Auditing these systems can help to determine the accuracy of these data. Such audit may take place internally by systems designers, but external audit is important for accountability. In this paper we explore whether users can conduct their own external audit of the systems with which they interact. In particular, we use the Right to Data Portability afforded to data subjects through the General Data Protection Regulation. Using fitness trackers, we collect and upload running data to a set of data controllers. By using data portability to then obtain a copy of our data, we compare the data held by the controllers with our ground-truth data. We find some inaccuracies in the data, but also that audit can be impeded by insufficient explanations from data controllers.Postprin