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Who Are the Users of Smart Homes? Surveillance in Domestic IoT Contexts
Malmö University, Faculty of Technology and Society (TS), Department of Computer Science and Media Technology (DVMT). Malmö University, Internet of Things and People (IOTAP).ORCID iD: 0009-0009-7387-3367
2024 (English)In: Privacy Symposium 2024: Data Protection Law International Convergence and Compliance with Innovative Technologies (DPLICIT) / [ed] Jaap-Henk Hoepman; Meiko Jensen; Maria Grazia Porca; Stefan Schiffner; Sébastien Ziegler, Springer Nature , 2024, p. 141-164Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

Although the number of smart home users is increasing, privacy regulations such as the GDPR exempt data collected from household environments for personal use. Previous research has considered how smart homeowners might be seen as joint data controllers due to the amount of data available to them. The self-surveillance capabilities of smart homes allow homeowners to generate personal data both regarding themselves and people in the surroundings of the smart home. This chapter considers who the data subjects of smart homes might be by investigating the different kinds of user roles frequenting research regarding smart home surveillance. By conducting a systematic mapping review, 11 user roles are reported on along with the benefits and risks each role experiences as a result of smart home surveillance. The contribution of the chapter is a deeper understanding of smart home surveillance from the perspective of data subjects. This may inform future research and the development of privacy policy to consider the smart home as a distinct site with unique challenges related to Internet of Things-enabled surveillance.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Springer Nature , 2024. p. 141-164
National Category
Computer and Information Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-75971DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-76265-9_7ISBN: 978-3-031-76264-2 (print)ISBN: 978-3-031-76265-9 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-75971DiVA, id: diva2:1960073
Conference
Privacy Symposium: Data Protection Law International Convergence and Compliance with Innovative Technologies DPLICIT 2024, Venice, Italy, 10-14 June 2024
Available from: 2025-05-22 Created: 2025-05-22 Last updated: 2025-05-22Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. The Role of Ethics in Smart Homes
Open this publication in new window or tab >>The Role of Ethics in Smart Homes
2024 (English)Licentiate thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

The home is commonly considered a private place to relax and be left alone. When introducing Internet of Things (IoT) into private spaces such as our homes, people transform into users of smart homes. Smart homes offer multiple benefits, such as increased security, entertainment, health, and energy efficiency. However, they also introduce various ethical challenges, such as managing the large amount of personal data in flux. From benign and seemingly harmless activities, such as your ideal indoor temperature or the time you turn your lights off at night, to deeply private and idiosyncratic ones, smart home-generated data can capture the wide-ranging activities that occur in the home. Analyzing ethical concerns related to smart homes requires an approach that explores the concerns contextually, as privacy is widely acknowledged to be defined in situ. Additionally, the interrelated stakeholders involved in developing and delivering smart home services – IoT developers, private companies, users, and lawmakers, to name a few – might approach the smart home context and its ethics differently. Methods to document ethical analyses to continue the exploration of smart home ethics over time and across stakeholder groups are currently lacking. A deeper examination into the role of ethics in smart homes is therefore warranted to develop methods supporting the contextual analysis of ethical risks and concerns. This thesis aims to review the literature on smart home ethics to consider the categories of smart home ethics and define its users. Subsequently, an approach to support ethical analyses of smart homes is developed based on conceptualizing smart homes as digital ecosystems. The analogy of a digital ecosystem has shown promise in supporting discussions across stakeholder groups and unifying the understanding of the context under analysis. The thesis documents the development and evaluation of a digital ecosystem approach and how it supports the contextual analysis of ethics in smart homes. The approach includes three artifacts developed by applying the design science research methodology. The artifacts include a species ontology defining four species of digital ecosystems, a conceptual model to depict the relationships between species and how data flows through the ecosystem, and a method to operationalize ethical analyses of smart homes. The method artifact is designed as a workshop and applies the ontology and conceptual model to support the systematic documentation of the analyses. Three workshops were conducted to evaluate the approach's utility in contextually defining unethical use cases of smart homes and eliciting ethical system requirements. The research contributions include a deeper understanding of smart home ethics and insights into how ethical analyses of domestic IoT might be conducted. Several ethical concerns are discussed in the thesis, such as the surveillance of children, data rights of smart home users beyond the household members, intimate partner violence, IoT gaslighting, IoT forensics, and power dynamics related to intrusive surveillance practices. This work may inform future research and policy developers to consider the smart home as a distinct site with unique challenges, seen as its connotations of being a private space, separate from but not independent of the public domain.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Malmö University Press, 2024. p. 63
Series
Studies in Computer Science ; 29
Keywords
Smart Homes, Ethics, Internet of Things, Privacy, Surveillance, Digital Ecosystems, Ethical Analysis, Ethical Requirements
National Category
Information Systems, Social aspects
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-72602 (URN)10.24834/isbn.9789178775576 (DOI)978-91-7877-556-9 (ISBN)978-91-7877-557-6 (ISBN)
Presentation
2024-12-16, Auditorium B1, Niagara, Malmö University, Malmö, 10:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Note

The papers are not included in the fulltext online.

Paper II in dissertation as manuscript.

Available from: 2024-12-09 Created: 2024-12-09 Last updated: 2025-06-24Bibliographically approved

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Bagheri, Sally

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