PETs in Your Home – How Smart is That ? HUPS Position Paper

Information technology has reached a level of sophistication so that its users leave detailed traces of the parts of their lives when they knowingly interact with information systems (e.g., Internet use) or participate in the social sphere (e.g., video surveillance). The recent advent of the smart home technology, that is residential properties being equipped with sensors and interconnected smart devices, expands the realm of unavoidable data collection further. This exacerbates people’s fear of privacy breaches. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how reasonably the known privacy-enhancing technologies can be applied in the case of a fictional smart home scenario. It briefly discusses potential areas of privacy problems specific to this new technology, then recalls the fundamental ideas behind known privacy-enhancing technologies, and critically evaluates their applicability in an intelligent home with special emphasis on usability. The paper concludes with a discussion of ways forward to effectively adapt privacy protection concepts in this particular environment.