Tatiana Renae Ringenberg, Indiana University Bloomington, and Lorraine G. Kisselburgh, Purdue University
Vulnerable, exploited, and unempowered people are the most in need of privacy and digital agency. Conversely, approaches to protecting the most vulnerable have often harmed the very people they seek to protect. Current approaches, including Apple’s systematic mass surveillance and proposals to break end-to-end encryption in the UK, must be evaluated not only in terms of potential harm mitigated but also in terms of risks of future harm. The growing accessibility of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is one component of this problem. Thwarting stalking, human trafficking, sextortion, and other forms of criminal harassment and surveillance requires a coordinated effort that centers on prevention, harm mitigation, and recovery for survivors. By focusing on designing for survivors and the at-risk rather than enforcement and punishment, we can identify the general risk to privacy and the specific risks to vulnerable populations. A design approach that centers on harm mitigation can align with the entirety of the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct of the ACM, without sacrificing one type of harm to detect another.
Tatiana Ringenberg, Indiana University Bloomington
Tatiana Ringenberg is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Informatics at Indiana University Bloomington as part of the Computing Innovation Fellows program. Her research interests revolve around applying natural language processing to societal challenges online. Her specific interests include manipulative processes used to harm vulnerable populations, annotation methodologies for textual social science datasets, biases in law enforcement investigations and triage, and online crime resilience.
Lorraine Kisselburgh, Purdue University
Lorraine Kisselburgh is a fellow in the Center for Education and Research in Information Security (CERIAS), lecturer in the Center for Entrepreneurship, and former professor of media, technology, and society at Purdue University. Her research focuses on the social implications of emerging technologies, including privacy, ethics, and collaboration; technological and cultural contexts of social interaction; and gender in STEM contexts.
author = {Tatiana Ringenberg and Lorraine Kisselburgh},
title = {A Way Forward: What We Know (or Not) about {CSAM} \& Privacy},
year = {2022},
address = {Santa Clara, CA},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = jun
}