Over the next two years the project EPRSC funded project Defence Against the Dark Artefacts will be studying means of identifying devices running in home which have been compromised by malware, and how the social context of the home should inform appropriate responses. The team, comprising of three computer scientists, two sociologists and legal studies scholar, also met with some of our industry partners. We heard about how they are wrestling with exactly these questions – of protecting domestic users from bad actors in an increasingly complex technical environment, and doing so in a way which doesn’t generate its own problems by, for example, inadvertently sharing sensitive personal information between members of the home, or by disabling a critical device at a moment when it’s need. Digital infrastructures in the home have to this point proceeded by hiding themselves away from the user as much as possible. As these networks become both ever more integrated into to domestic practices, and targeted by external threats, DADA is considering how we might begin to surface some aspects of the technology to users, in order to intervene in a manner which is locally appropriate, and accountable to those users.
The team's next steps is to complete the hiring of researchers – two computer scientists, an ethnographer, a sociologist and a UI designer. Preparatory work will then begin on the technical and social science work. The final hire will be an animator who will work with the team to create a series of design fictions exploring this space. These will be used in focus groups for understanding user responses to the proposed technologies, and in public engagement activities.
Posted on Thursday 6th December 2018