Privacy and Participation in Ubiquitous Information Systems: Information Ethics when Mobile Phones are Sensors

Ubiquitious information systems hold increasing promise for widespread participation in data collection and dissemination. Common and abundant devices such as mobile phones can sense and record data such as location, sound, and images. These systems can facilitate community participation in basic and applied research, improvement of quality of life, social change, self-reflection, and creative expression. But the design and use of these tools also pose new challenges for privacy, data security, and ethics. This paper explores responsible approaches to the design of systems for ubiquitous digital capture. The authors include an Information Studies researcher working alongside computer scientists and engineers from the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS). This ongoing partnership pairs ethical frameworks developed within Information Studies and Science and Technology Studies with system design expertise and concrete, real-world challenges. For example, CENS is developing a platform to share activity inferences generated with geospatial data from mobile phones to assess personal environmental impact. CENS is also exploring systems for capturing and sharing data about neighborhood walkability and other community assets. The ongoing research detailed in this paper investigates how such ubiquitous sensing projects can conscientiously collect personal data for social science and participatory research applications