The value of consent: Discussions with designers of ubiquitous computing systems

Pervasive computing systems raise unprecedented challenges to citizen privacy. They fundamentally skew the relationship between our public and private selves, conflating the two in ever-changing and unanticipated ways. Within this context, the act of consenting is a critical mechanism of empowerment, allowing us to protect those aspects of our lives we wish to retain as private. Whilst designers of such systems are uniquely positioned to create mechanisms that embed consent-supporting practices, this is not a current priority. This pilot study employs two small focus groups to explore the utility of a series of consent `guidelines' with designers of pervasive systems. It finds that, whilst user consent is clearly valued, there exists a discord between participants' intention/belief and their practice, raising serious questions as to the extent to which purely `ethical' guidelines can ever gain traction at the point of design.