In the video conference on Tuesday, one of the issues that popped up a few times during conversation was privacy. We saw one instance of this problem when the Olsens walked into their office without realizing that the camera was on. This is a violation of both confidentiality and solitude as discussed in the privacy lecture. It violates confidentiality because we are now aware of the fact that the Olsens are in their office even though they did not actively choose to disclose that fact. It also violates solitude in the sense that the Olsens were not in a state of social isolation even though they had expected to be. These are actually general problems with video conferencing when there isn’t any feedback to indicate that video capture is on (Boyle & Greenberg 336).
For the Olsens, the issue occurred because their system was configured to auto-accept any incoming video conference request. It turns out this behavior can be toggled, which is a form of access control in order to prevent deliberate abuses of privacy (Boyle & Greenberg 332). However, this is an all-or-nothing solution: either everyone can activate their video cameras, or nobody can without their explicit permission. The access control is too lightweight, and thus may not be fine-grained enough to satisfy the user’s privacy requirements (Boyle & Greenberg 333).
A workable solution might involve changing the fidelity of the information. In lecture we discussed enforcing confidentiality by regulating information fidelity. By blurring parts of the video or reducing its resolution, we can still maintain some level of awareness without being able to observe excruciating detail. Erik Hofer alluded to the consequences of differing fidelity when we switched our video conferencing software from low to high resolution, thus changing the precision of the medium). He mentioned that he could not make out individual facial expressions in the low resolution feed, and thus it was hard to tell if any particular student in our class was intensely listening or falling asleep. Once we made the switch to a high resolution feed, he was immediately able to point out someone yawning in the class.
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Very interesting points! The idea of adjusting the fidelity of the information would certainly make sense in these 'always on' video conference setups. And clearly, as we saw in our conference and just in general, lowering the quality of video is not an issue.
ReplyDeleteWow, that's a clever solution. I also blogged about privacy, but my idea only covered people who were available and just away from their computer. I'm wondering though, what about sound? Like, what if the person being called is actually there, doesn't realize they're being called, and is talking about something they don't necessarily want the person calling in to hear? I guess you could use sound distortion as well, but then voices may become unrecognizable...
ReplyDeleteI agree that the behavior of the system can be fixed so that system does not auto-accept incoming video conference requests. However, while this may be an easy solution, some people are involved with on going projects that require the autoaccept to be on becuase they need to be in constant contact with group members.
ReplyDeletetu: Audio is a good point I hadn't thought of... it may be possible to reduce the volume to achieve a comparable effect, but yeah this might hamper you from being able to identify whose voice it is.
ReplyDeletekevin: I totally agree, but you're preaching to the choir here. My idea isn't about toggling auto-accept (a discrete parameter), but rather adjusting the fidelity (a continuous parameter).
As Tom mentioned, this kind of solution makes it possible to leave auto-accept on but still contain some of the privacy violations that might otherwise occur.