Preface

      In this book, we dissect and discuss the privacy implications of mobile and pervasive computing technology. For this purpose, we not only look at how mobile and pervasive computing technology affects our expectations of—and ability to enjoy—privacy, but also look at what constitutes “privacy” in the first place, and why we should care about maintaining it. The book is structured as follows.

      • Chapter 1: Introduction. This short chapter motivates the need for this book and outlines its contents.

      • Chapter 2: Understanding Privacy. This chapter offers an in-depth discussion on what privacy is, i.e., what it means to “have privacy”, and why we may want and need privacy. It does so by examining the concept of privacy from three perspectives: legal perspectives on privacy (also with a view towards their historic context); motivations for having (or not having) privacy; and more general conceptualizations of privacy. These perspectives support assessment of the often nuanced privacy implications of new technologies.

      • Chapter 3: Mobile and Pervasive Computing (MPC). This chapter summarizes the key defining characteristics of mobile and pervasive computing. While mobile and pervasive computing systems feature privacy issues inherent in any computer system in general (e.g., interconnectivity), aspects such as context awareness and implicit interaction pose new privacy challenges unique to mobile and pervasive computing.

      • Chapter 4: Privacy Implications of MPC. This chapter explores the specific privacy implications of mobile and pervasive computing in order to determine the challenges that must be addressed in order to create more privacy-friendly mobile and pervasive computing systems. It groups these around three core aspects: (1) the digitization of everyday life; (2) the ability of automatic data capture; and (3) the ability of using data to predict behavior. While none of these trends are new, mobile and pervasive computing systems exacerbate these issues greatly.

      • Chapter 5: Supporting Privacy in MPC. This chapter discusses seven key directions and associated challenges for building privacy-friendly mobile and pervasive computing systems: (1) privacy-friendly defaults; (2) adequate privacy-risk communication; (3) privacy management assistance; (4) context-adaptive privacy mechanisms; (5) user-centric privacy controls; (6) algorithmic accountability; and (7) privacy engineering methodologies. While there is no silver bullet to remedy all privacy implications of any mobile and pervasive computing system, the presented approaches constitute an essential toolbox for building privacy into mobile and pervasive computing systems.

      • Chapter 6: Conclusions. This chapter provides a brief outlook and stipulates key challenges for privacy that the authors see.

       FOCUS AND AUDIENCE OF THIS BOOK

      This book is intended as a brief introduction into the multidisciplinary area of privacy research, with a focus on its applicability