TY - JOUR

T1 - Privacy-Enhancing Technology and Everyday Augmented Reality

T2 - Understanding Bystanders' Varying Needs for Awareness and Consent

AU - O'hagan, Joseph

AU - Saeghe, Pejman

AU - Gugenheimer, Jan

AU - Medeiros, Daniel

AU - Marky, Karola

AU - Khamis, Mohamed

AU - Mcgill, Mark

N1 - Funding 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.

PY - 2023/1/11

Y1 - 2023/1/11

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Altered Reality

KW - Augmented Reality

KW - Biometrics

KW - Bystanders

KW - Extended Perception

KW - Privacy

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85146431805&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1145/3569501

DO - 10.1145/3569501

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85146431805

VL - 6

JO - Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies

JF - Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies

SN - 2474-9567

IS - 4

M1 - 177

ER -