Privacy-enhancing technology and everyday augmented reality: understanding bystanders' varying needs for awareness and consent

O'Hagan, J., Saeghe, P., Gugenheimer, J., Medeiros, D. , Marky, K., Khamis, M. and McGill, M. (2022) Privacy-enhancing technology and everyday augmented reality: understanding bystanders' varying needs for awareness and consent. Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, 6(4), 177. (doi: 10.1145/3569501)

Abstract

Fundamental to Augmented Reality (AR) headsets is their capacity to visually and aurally sense the world around them, necessary to drive the positional tracking that makes rendering 3D spatial content possible. This requisite sensing also opens the door for more advanced AR-driven activities, such as augmented perception, volumetric capture and biometric identification - activities with the potential to expose bystanders to significant privacy risks. Existing Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) often safeguard against these risks at a low level e.g., instituting camera access controls. However, we argue that such PETs are incompatible with the need for always-on sensing given AR headsets' intended everyday use. Through an online survey (N=102), we examine bystanders' awareness of, and concerns regarding, potentially privacy infringing AR activities; the extent to which bystanders' consent should be sought; and the level of granularity of information necessary to provide awareness of AR activities to bystanders. Our findings suggest that PETs should take into account the AR activity type, and relationship to bystanders, selectively facilitating awareness and consent. In this way, we can ensure bystanders feel their privacy is respected by everyday AR headsets, and avoid unnecessary rejection of these powerful devices by society.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: This research is supported by REPHRAIN: The National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online, under UKRI grant: EP/V011189/1.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Marky, Dr Karola and O'Hagan, Mr Joseph and Pires de Sa Medeiros, Dr Daniel and Saeghe, Dr Pejman and Khamis, Dr Mohamed and McGill, Dr Mark
• Authors: O'Hagan, J., Saeghe, P., Gugenheimer, J., Medeiros, D., Marky, K., Khamis, M., and McGill, M.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Journal Name: Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery
• ISSN: 2474-9567
• ISSN (Online): 2474-9567
• Published Online: 11 January 2023
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2022 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies 6(4): 177
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy