Security and privacy implications of pervasive memory augmentation

Davies, Nigel and Friday, Adrian and Clinch, Sarah and Sas, Corina and Langheinrich, Marc and Ward, Geoff and Schmidt, Albrecht (2015) Security and privacy implications of pervasive memory augmentation. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 14 (1). pp. 44-53. ISSN 1536-1268

Abstract

Pervasive computing is beginning to offer the potential to re-think and re-define how technology can support human memory augmentation. For example, the emergence of wide-spread pervasive sensing, personal recording technologies and systems for quantified self are creating an environment in which it is possible to capture fine-grained traces of many aspects of human activity. Contemporary psychology theories suggest that these traces can then be used to manipulate our ability to recall, i.e. to both re-enforce and attenuate human memories. In this paper we consider the privacy and security implications of using pervasive computing to augment human memory. We describe a number of scenarios, outline the key architectural building blocks and identify entirely new types of security and privacy threats – namely those related to data security (experience provenance), data management (establishing new paradigms for digital memory ownership), data integrity (memory attenuation and recall induced forgetting), and bystander privacy. Together these threats present compelling research challenges for the pervasive computing research community.