What are the contributions of the paper?

The paper provides an introduction of the privacy issues in the field
of Ubiquitous computing and develops six principles which can be used
as the guidelines for privacy protection including: notice, choice and
consent, proximity and locality, anonymity and pseudonymity, security,
and access and recourse. For each of the principles, the paper
discusses the advantages, disadvantages, assumptions, solutions and
future enhancements.

What is the quality of the presentation?

The quality of the presentation is good.  The structure of the papers
is both clear and logical, and audiences can follow the flow of ideas
easily. The paper uses both theoretical computing knowledge and real
life examples to support the ideas and this makes the principles
intuitive, precise and easily understood.


What are the strengths of the paper?

By providing the introduction of privacy protection history and legal
status, the paper give rise to both the interests of audiences and the
attention of the privacy issues of Ubiquitous computing.

The paper does not only introduce each principle separately but also
discuss the combinations of the principles, which can server as a
whole to achieve better privacy protection.


What are its weaknesses?

The paper should talk more about the social impact/cost of privacy
violation in the Ubiquitous system including: cause, possible attacks,
cost and recovery methods. The author could associate the principles
with each cases so that audiences can have a better understanding the
real implementations of the principles.


What is some possible future work?

The author can have further investigations on the implementations of
the principles including: technologies to be used, cost analysis,
handling exceptional cases, necessary legislation issues and the
cooperations amoung government, computing industry and customers.

=============================================================================

This paper presents a very comprehensive discussion of the privacy
issues faced by computer scientists today. While the theme of the
paper is privacy in pervasive computing, it sheds light on many
different areas such as databases and AI where privacy issues seem to
originate from. The paper does an excellent job of summarizing what
we, as a civilization, have learnt so far regarding the costs and
benefits of privacy and underscores the critical principles on which
to come to compromises in the design of future privacy aware systems
(may they be ubiquitous or otherwise).

And finally, the reason why I found the paper exceptionally enjoyable
is that without attempting to provide a limited answer to the question
of privacy vs. ubiquity it lays down the groundwork on which it should
be answered. It asks many open questions which may not have any
answers but more importantly they provide a basis for intellectual
discussion on the issues that need to be addressed by researchers of
today.

=============================================================================

For some reason I have been seized with the idea that dealing with
privacy issues is mainly a topic considered by law makers, so this
paper looks rather legal system oriented than computer science
based. Nonetheless, it is a great paper on taking a close look at the
privacy issues involved in ubiquitous or pervasive computing and the
designing of the principles and guidelines of privacy aware ubiquitous
systems. The structure of the paper is simple and elegant, and I found
that in particular the elaborations of the backgrounds and
implications of privacy and ubiquitous computing are very helpful in
terms of understanding the need of privacy-aware ubiquitous
systems. (It is interesting to know that some people advocate a
privacy-free world). The author contributes the design principles and
guidelines, based on the fair information practices, for the main
areas that cover most of the privacy aspects of ubiquitous
systems---systems that implement privacy without compromising the
availability of data. However, I believe that there are more possible
solutions to the problems listed in each area to be discovered. This
paper serves as a guidance to the to-be-explored huge problem and
solution domains of ubiquitous computing on privacy issues.

=============================================================================

   * What are the contributions of the paper?

The major contributions of this paper is giving the six principles for
guiding system design, which are notice, choice and consent, proximity
and locality, anonymity and pseudonym, security, and access and
resource. It is true that we can protect our privacy according to
these principles.  Sometimes, it will make the protection work easier
by using them.

   * What is the quality of the presentation?

It is really hard to say the quality of this paper because it is
neither a survey paper nor a technical paper.  I think we can consider
it as an introduction paper, which is suitable to every reader, no
matter what he/she focuses on.  If we consider it as this, it has a
good quality. For example, in the Part 2 (Privacy), it talks lots
about different Privacy Law and Acts, which is the basis of all the
current protection work. Those can be the guide for computer
researchers.

   * What are the strengths of the paper?

First, it detailly analysis many privacy laws, which can guide the
researchers to work. Also, in some description of the privacies, there
are some points relating to the privacy protection work, such as
Convenience in Page 5, which tells us what kinds of information are
worth protecting.

Second, it mentions some technologies in other areas can be used in
ubiquitous area. And, summarize the main difference between ubiquitous
computing and other computer science domain, which can be used as a
guide to distinguish what kinds of technologies can or can not be used
in ubiquitous.

Third, the six principles given by the paper are powerful to guide the
system design.

Forth, every idea and principle in this paper is well defined and
explained. (Sometime, maybe too much.)

   * What are its weaknesses?

It did not give any technology, just some possible suggestions, which
let me think this paper was not written by a computer researcher.  It
writes too much about the histories of the privacy laws so that this
paper can not attract the computer researchers.  The paper should give
more examples to support those six principles. Maybe some diagrams
will be helpful.

   * What is some possible future work?

The author and other computer researchers can use those six principles
as a guide to implement some ubiquitous protocol.  By these, if it is
successful to implement, then the author or others can make a guider
book for future developing by using these six rules.

=============================================================================

What are the contributions of the paper?

This paper gives us an introductory reading to privacy issues in the
field of ubiquitous computing. The most outstanding contribution of
the paper is that it gave us a principle and guideline of the
privacy-awareness when designing ubiquitous systems. Based on a set of
fair information practices common in most privacy legislation in use
today, the author presented six main areas of innovation and system
design for future research on which ubiquitous computing would need to
focus. These areas are notice, choice and consent, anonymity and
pseudonymity, proximity and locality, adequate security, access and
resource.

 

What is the quality of the presentation?

The quality of the presentation is very good, because there is not
mathematic equation in the paper that would be hard and abstract to
understand. When the author explains what he wants to express and what
seems to be hard to the readers, he makes a corresponding analogy that
is easy to understand (e.g. coffee cup). Besides, the organization of
this paper is clear. The author gives a brief history of privacy
protection at the beginning, and then discusses historical legal
issues and its expected utility as background information. After that,
the author presents the six principles for guiding system design.

 

What are the strengths of the paper?

First of all, the principles the author gave are comprehensive, so it
contains all aspects regarding privacy. That ascribes to the mass of
background materials. In addition, the author didn’t simply talk
about privacy issues, when designing systems. He associated the
privacy issues with social implications and legal issues, and
emphasizes on whether it is implementable when designing a system
(e.g. power consumption and connectivity problems).

 

What are its weaknesses?

In my opinion, if the author could give some pictures to illustrate
his ideas, it would achieve better effect for his expression. In
addition, the paper gave a high level presentation, did not address
solutions for some specific privacy issues.

 

What is some possible future work?

We need to continue to explore new principles when designing
privacy-aware ubiquitous systems, because the new technology is
emerging day after day. Therefore, we don’t know if and when personal
data collection by new technological devices (or sensors) erodes
privacy.

=============================================================================

# What are the contributions of the paper?  The main contribution of
# this paper are 6 basic principles for guiding system
# design,especially in ubiquitous systems. Those principles would give
# ubiquitous system designers a privacy-protection in mind when
# designing and planing their works. Besides, it helps us to
# understand the legal and social issues and their effects on privacy
# protection in ubiquitous systems.  What is the quality of the
# presentation?  The presentation is clear and well-organized. The
# paper structure is coherent and easy to follow.  What are the
# strengths of the paper? The author did a very good research on legal
# privacy matters and showed us some people's interesting arguments on
# why privacy protection is not really necessary.  Each suggested
# principle in the paper is analyzed carefully, many good and
# understandable examples are given for explaining and demonstrating
# terms and issues the paper mentions.The proposed principles
# effectively exploits features of ubiquitous systems. Besides
# suggested principles, the paper also recommends some very good
# appoaches on how to implement them in real life.
 
# What are its weaknesses? Even though showing us some reasons why
# privacy protection is not really necessary, but the paper doesn't
# mention any reason why privacy protection is actually vital. The
# locality principle is not described very clearly in the paper,
# however , this principle is kind of too restricted and it doesn't
# really prevent information unwantedly distributed, especially with
# nowaday technology (a person who gathers information in a place no
# matter where it is easily spreads it to everyone else). The paper
# basically proposes 6 principles, however, the paper doesn't mention
# any possible problem that applying those principles into system
# designing might reduce the utility and convenience of ubiquitous
# systems.  What is some possible future work? Besides those 6
# principles, is there any other principle which is equivalent for
# privacy protection in ubiquitous systems ?  More experiments needed
# to be done in order to prove the correctness of those principles.
# Is it gonna be hard or easy to implement those principles in real
# ubiquitous systems ?

=============================================================================

What are the contributions of the paper?  -Provided some background
history and legal issues of privacy -Provided areas of ubiquitous
computing that raise concern in privacy issues.  -Propose some
possible solution to those problems such as: robot.txt-like
announcements and devices detecting if owner's in proximity


What is the quality of the presentation?  -Over all is good, although
I found the author tries to cover too much in this paper so I felt
that it seems to jump around topics.


What are the strengths of the paper?  -Lots of new ideas and they are
all very interesting.  -Althought the scenerios describled in the
paper are very far from reachable in the near future, the issues and
solutions seem valid.


What are its weaknesses?  -Aside from trying to cover too much
different aspect, there isn't alot of weaknesses.


What is some possible future work?  -Futher investigate each of the
area described.  -The argument about the all-remembering coffee mug
v.s. a friend with good memory sounds interesting. May be a study of
people willingness have a conversation with say: A stranger A stranger
with relatively good memory A stranger who likes to take notes of
converstations A stranger who records conversations.....etc

=============================================================================

his paper gives an introduction to privacy in ubiquitous
computing. The author developed six principles for guiding a system
design in the field of ubiquitous computing, namely, notice, choice
and consent, proximity and locality, anonymity and pseudonymity,
security, and access and recourse. Also the author supplies the paper
with privacy in ubiquitous computing from three perspectives, history,
legal status, and expected utility. The author also mentioned four
reasons that privacy in ubiquitous computing deserved addetional
attention including ubiquity, invisibility, sensing and memory
amplification.

The author presented the paper in such a way that it gives the reader
an idea about basic privacy in ubiquitous computing. This paper
provides six focused points to get a good privacy solution. One of the
strength of this paper is that it gives guidelines to any organization
about how to deal with their customers’ information. From Customers
side, this paper clarifies what information customers look for when
they deal with an organization for the first time. The idea of
proximity is hard to be applied in many scenarios. The author did not
mention the role of the government regarding privacy protection.
  
=============================================================================

The paper is a great introductory reading about privacy in ubiquitous
systems. It elaborates the issue from many perspectives, such as
history, law, technology and etc. The presentation is very good. It
could be better if there are some figures. The strength of the paper
is its comprehensiveness. It addresses the privacy issues in
ubiquitous computing from many perspectives that many people may have
not thought about. The paper also summaries the principles and
guidelines for designing privacy and explains their pros, cons, and
difficulties to achieve these principles in ubiquitous
systems. However, as an introductory reading, the paper does not talk
much about the current progress and the direction of the frontier
research in this area. How do people in academia look at this issue? 
How do people in industry look at this issue? Is ubiquitous computing
achievable from the perspective of science and engineering?  As an
introductory reading, the future work might be to summarize and report
the current research results. Are there any exciting and
groundbreaking progresses? People are eager to know.

=============================================================================

What are the contributions of the paper?

This paper develops six guidelines for designing privacy-aware
ubiquitous systems: notice, choice and consent, proximity and
locality, anonymity and pseudonymity, security and access and
recourse, balancing the privacy practices and goals with the
convenience and technical feasibility.  It also gives the background
on privacy. A brief history shows how the primary focus of privacy has
changed according to technological development. Additionally, the
author reviews two influential pieces of privacy legislation, the US
Privacy Act of 1974 and the "Directive", and their impact on the
design of data processing systems.

What is the quality of the presentation?

The structure is clear and has good transitions.

What are the strengths of the paper?

This paper is thought invoking. It provides computer scientists the
legal issues surrounding privacy, and calls on them to follow the
well-established principles when design ubiquitous systems, and drive
technology into a responsible direction.  When giving the six
principles, the author considers both its technical feasibility in the
context of ubiquitous computing, enumerating possible devices or
mechanisms, but also the convenience or inconvenience associated with
them.

What are its weaknesses?

Although it is a introductory level reading, the introductions of
principles and guidelines should be fulled developed. Some guidelines
(e.g. Access and Recourse) lack in-depth analysis.

What is some possible future work?

One of the possible future work is to apply these guidelines to the
design and implementation of the ubiquitous systems.

=============================================================================

The main contribution of this paper is to present some principles to
be followed (or at least be aware of) when designing ubiquitous
computing systems. Among them: notice, choice and consent, proximity
and locality, anonymity and pseudoanonymity, security, and access and
recourse. Concerning the quality of the presentation: the paper is
well organized and well written, however, I think the author could
have written a better conclusion, which could summarize better the
content of the paper.

What makes this paper strong is the comprehensive analysis of the
principles, which includes a future vision of the world and how the
computer systems might interact, as well as the social implications of
such a modern and "ubiquitous" world. Furthermore, I personally really
liked the several examples the author gives in each of the principles
discussed. On the other hand, I think that the paper suffers from a
European view. In order to make a more comprehensive analysis, I think
that such a work could consider the point of view from people of the
different continents and cultures, making the principles still
stronger.

Since this paper is an introductory reading to privacy issues in
ubiquitous computing, I think that this work could be expanded by
building some real cases models, and deeply analysing such
models. This analysis could consider implementing such models in
different countries and be analysed by several research groups. From
this study may result material enough for the elaboration of a book,
which in turn would give a great contribution in the privacy and
ubiquitous computing areas.

=============================================================================

The main contributions of this paper are to provide a background in
the concepts of privacy and ubiquitous computing, and to set forth a
set of principles and guidelines to feasibly provide privacy in a
ubiquitous computing environment.  The paper gives a lot of background
and history of the concept of privacy then provides some information
on the social implications of ubiquitous computing.  The principles of
giving notice when data about a person is being collected, making sure
that people have a choice and give consent to have data recorded about
them, giving people the option of being anonymous or pseudo anonymous
to the system, limiting the range of where the data collected by the
system can be used, providing the appropriate level of security for
the data collected, and how access and repudiation should be applied
in the system are all discussed.

 

The overall quality of the presentation was excellent.  The paper was
very easy to read and could actually be read straight through and
easily understood.  The sections of the paper progressed logically
from one topic to the next, and a great amount of background
information was given.  The paper didn’t have any diagrams, but
truthfully, the way the material was presented didn’t really require
them.

 

The paper had many strengths.  The largest of these, as mentioned
above, was probably the detail that went into the background
information given, which really helped in understanding where the
principles and guidelines presented in the bulk of the paper were
based.  The principles and guidelines presented in the paper also
seemed to be quite well thought out, and don’t seem like they would
be unrealistic to implement.  The use of recurring examples (like the 
“coffee cup” example) helped illustrate the points being made while
not forcing the reader to envision a new scenario for every point.
This helped to keep the paper flowing smoothly.  Finally, showing how
the principles given are implemented in current internet privacy
systems (such as discussing how P3P gives notice on the world wide
web) gave a good reference point from which to view the principles.

 

There were really only two main weaknesses to this paper.  The first
of which is related to the length of the background information on
privacy.  The detail certainly was appreciated since it gave a good
reference point from which to discuss privacy issues in ubiquitous
systems, but the sheer length of this section seemed a little
excessive, taking up nearly half the paper.  Some sections about the
history of privacy probably could have been omitted and paper would
have been equally understandable.  Second, while the principles and
guidelines given in the paper do seem solid, there is no real
discussion for their technical application.  Even though this paper is
meant to simply be a set of guiding principles, some technical
information would have been nice.

 

Obviously, the main future work derived from this paper would be to
develop a prototype ubiquitous computing environment which actually
implements the principles discussed.  Having practical test results of
these principles being applied would definitely be the next step in
proving their validity.

=============================================================================

What are the contributions of the paper?

The author did an excellent job in making this paper an introductory
reading on privacy issues in ubiquitous computing. In stead of making
yet another definition on the hard to define term privacy, the authors
discuss privacy from three angles: its history, legal status and
utility. The author argues that the degree of privacy protection with
ubiquitous computing should be sitting on the middle ground of
zero-privacy and total privacy. The authors also suggested 6 guiding
principles that the future research on privacy protection in
ubiquitous computing should focus on.

What is the quality of the presentation?

The paper is well organized. As a wonderful introductory reading, the
paper is organized in a very good flow: first gives the readers a
feeling on privacy issues and then talks about the social impact
posted by ubiquitous computing and finally suggests some guiding
principles. The writing is easy to read and understand.

What are the strengths of the paper?

The author brought up some very interesting questions in the
discussion of privacy protection versus feasibility, convenience,
social benefit, information symmetry from social point of view. I also
like most of the interesting examples given in this paper. The six
guiding principles in privacy protection are very useful in my opinion
and should be taken into serious considerations during the design of
ubiquitous computing systems.

What are its weaknesses?

Some examples used in this paper are not accurate and not likely to
exist in reality in the future, say spy coffee-cup, recording
cloth. The paper somehow gives me the fear that our environment in the
future will be filled up with next generation sensors capable of high
quality audio and video recording. Actually I believe that a bigger
threaten to privacy with ubiquitous computing is not audio/video, but
tracking and information leaking from smart devices.

What is some possible future work?

I especially like the ideal of anonymity and pseudonymity. Actually,
for example, as long as my real identity can not be identified by
others, I don't care if my coffee mug or the sensors along DC hallway
knows that there is a person who goes to the coffee shop ten times a
day. I think how to break the linking of devices to person or hiding
the real identify of device owners by anonymity or pseudonymity might
be a good direction for future research for the privacy protection in
ubiquitous computing. Also I feel that the degree of
consent/authentication should really tight with the amount and the
sensitivity of information that I or my smart devices are going to
disclosure.

=============================================================================

What are the contributions of the paper?

The paper's primary contribution is an overview of privacy principles
identified in key privacy legislation with a view to their
applicability to ubiquitous computing settings. It serves as an
introduction to the legal issues involved and describes how they might
be addressed in this context. It also makes a few suggestions about
how these privacy principles may be implemented in current
technologies. Finally, it gives a starting-off point for thinking
about how these privacy issues interact with the technology and how
both may have to change to accommodate each other.

What is the quality of the presentation?

The presentation is of reasonably high quality. The key issues and
main points are clear. Examples are used to make some of the more
abstract concepts concrete. However, grammatical mistakes make the
wording of many sentences awkward.

What are the strengths of the paper?

It provides a clear introduction to the key issues. The background and
historical discussion give the reader insight into how current laws
and ideas about privacy evolved in relation to the technological
changes of the time and suggest how future ideas may evolve from
today's technological changes.

What are its weaknesses?

One possible weakness of the paper is that it provides little in the
way of really practical advice for ubiquitous system designers and
implementors. It seems instead to be meant as a jumping-off point for
considering privacy issues.

What is some possible future work?

As the paper states, the privacy issues in ubiquitous computing are
just starting to be addressed. There is much room for future work on
both the theoretical and practical sides of the issue. On the
theoretical side, there is a rich new world of possibilities for
computer scientists, legal scholars and social scientists to explore
in determining how technological advancements will change what
information we can gather about people, how we can gather it, what
laws should govern it, and how much information people are willing to
give up. The very idea of what is private and what is public
information may be changed by these technologies. Also, there is much
work to be done on the practical side of actually taking these
principles and investigating how and even whether they can be applied
to different systems in practice.

=============================================================================

    * What are the contributions of the paper?  Discusses principals
    * of privacy in the coming years as ubiquitous computing takes
    * hold. Its model is very realistic and illustrates a sort of
    * bike-lock mentality: wanting to keep honest people honest. As
    * computing get small they will find many uses for illegal
    * surveilance, but its important to keep people who just want to
    * use their devices, and as the example suggests, forget them
    * somewhere, from accidently inheriting a wealth of private
    * data. It begins with privacy law implementation in US and EU and
    * clearly shows a preference for EU law (which I too now have). It
    * shows two mentalities, where EU has strong privacy law, but
    * people are eager to hand their privacy to them for their own
    * good, a stronger trust in their government, where such trust can
    * be earned. EU formerly kept phone call registers, but they were
    * made on a request only basis following WWII, when the nazi used
    * phone records to round out potential dissidents, communists, and
    * jews as they rampaged through europe. Clearly, EU has had more
    * extreme lessons of the importance of privacy whereas US sees
    * only benefit in mass comsumerism by having no customer privacy.
    * It then talks about a few main principals that should be applied
    * to ubiquitous design in the future. By using proximity then
    * recording devices are no more of a threat than having every
    * single conversation you make be on-the-record, instead of every
    * conversation you make being heard by people not present

    * What is the quality of the presentation?  Very interesting
    * paper. The topic matter is interesting and well
    * written. Examples used such as gossiping in a small town to show
    * the effects of locality illustrate well the idea. Use of smart
    * coffee cups and other examples make the paper humourous without
    * distracting from the main point. In fact it adds to it:
    * ubiquitous computing is coming and it will be rediculous!
    * Citations occur mainly when discussing various privacy laws in
    * the EU and US. However, for most of the sections involving
    * actual subject matter there are almost no citations. For
    * example, Ian Goldberg's work with Zero-Knowledge is discussed
    * uncitedly.  Also, it does not mention any future work. Many
    * ideas are suggested, such as proximity and locality, but no
    * algorithms or protocols are suggested and no research into such
    * things are mentioned, or indeed cited. The reader is left with a
    * glimpse into the future with no where to look for more depthful
    * research into a single topic. An introductary paper such as this
    * one should try harder to guide the reader towards a greater
    * wealth of resources relating to specific topics in which they
    * may now be interested.

    * What are the strengths of the paper?  Really interesting
    * work. It creates an image of a future world where computers are
    * so cheap and omnipresent that you have to assume that there is
    * always one present. Moreover, its a basic assumption that
    * everything you say and do will be recorded by a person present,
    * for good or bad. The pace of the paper is well, it suceeds in
    * introducing the field of ubiquitous computing. Providing a brief
    * history of privacy laws is a good idea because it provides the
    * field with a goal of reasonable privacy to which it should
    * strive. Changing the law because the devices won't cooperate is
    * not a solution, banning the offending devices is. for example:
    * radar detectors interfere with the law, so they are banned.  It
    * is also good that they reinforce that ubiquitous computing
    * cannot trump people who choose privacy. Thus ubiquitous devices
    * must be able to avoid tracking people who opt out. It certainly
    * makes it interesting problem because not tracking someone is a
    * form of tracking them. Using anonymity is a solution it
    * mentions, and it also clearly shows the risk that so much data
    * is publically available and cross-referencable that much care
    * must be taken when collecting even anonymous data. It also
    * discusses how if very few people opt for anonymity, then they
    * lose their anonymity entirely (and moreover, might be thought of
    * as suspicious!)  The focus on the privacy principals is well
    * done, as the problems, such as getting consent and notice are
    * clearly manditory, but the fact that they are unavoidably hard
    * to solve in practise is well illustrated. The idea of walking
    * down the street and being warned that dozens of things are
    * violating my privacy and me having to permit them is absurd.
    * However, the use of proxity and locality are well argued. By
    * only letting devices work when their owner is present is a
    * splendid solution to accidentally leaving behind surveilance
    * devices, however many more solutions will be necessary as the
    * actual devices and attacks become clear. As for a field
    * introduction it was very informative and intersting.


    * What are its weaknesses?  N.B. Most of these weaknesses I
    * provide deal with ubiquitous computing combined with an
    * adversary, and it says the principals are for protecting against
    * accidental privacy violations. However in its abstact it says it
    * is an introductory reading to privacy issues and thus should
    * have at least mentioned these problems.

It takes for granted that governements will insist on privacy laws and
thus private industry will naturally accept these laws. This field
will likely required some intense activism and lobbying, which the
business sector already has an advantage (they are already doing
it!). The EU provides hope for similar laws, but recently has been
undermining their position.  They started automatically generating
phone call lists again, and Britian is making ID cards manditory. How
do you police this?  Manditory RFID cards and police scanning? Police
could patrol and aim a scanner at anyone, fetching their ID and
crosslinking it to their police record instantly, or use datamined
statistics that have been precomputed to present a threat level a
random person poses, and perhaps follow them around. People who
innocently correlate well may find themselves harassed moreoften.
Additionally, the US is currently a worse violator of public privacy
than it has been in recent memory. Is trusting the government to
always act with noble interests ever a wise course of action? 
Certainly there are a number of countries in which I would never want
to be a political prisoner, whereas I trust this country to afford me
a great deal more freedom of speech, however absolute power corrupts
absolutely. With locality, it is still possible that any government
body could form a warrent and enter into an building to hear the
transgressions.

It also shows no concern for having every conversation catalogued and
documented, instead seems to accept it as: the future. When everyone's
words recorded by everyone, perhaps a toolkit can arrive that allows
searching through voice for words, and arranging them to produce a
dialog of the person's choice, and using techniques in sound (not yet
developed) to link the words in a natural way. This would allow all
conversations that alledgedly happened to be plausibly denied, and
result in data collection devices only to be used for their intended
purpose, to record your thought and conversations for later personal
recollection.

Locality makes applied sense, "what happens in vegas, stays in vegas",
but it doesn't really provide any assurances of privacy. If
conversations you make can only be repeated in the same room they
occured, then you can only protect conversations in your own office.
What if someone breaks into it? or places a device that actuates the
recording and creates its own recording of what it hears? How will you
manage to get someone else to participate in a controvertial
conversation, when both parties will want ownership and access
control?  What if the doorknob hears? will it be able to tell people
on the other side?

It is nice that they reinforce that idea that 'take it or leave it' is
not a good or socially beneficial strategy, however I'm left with the
concern that this is the evenvitable result. If I'm walking down the
street and my cell phone warns me that someone is walking with a voice
recording, how can I not permit it? by not walking on the street or
demanding they turn it off? Surely banning such devices on public
street is a better solution for all involved, but the computer retail
industry will not favour such a solution. Moreover, how can I know who
is using it without violating their privacy? If I'm walking behind
them I'd want to know that its not an ephereal event (i.e. they walk
by me the other way and are gone) which I might otherwise ignore. If
my phone is on quiet, how will I be able to give informed consent.

Useful that it does not try to prevent ubiquitous computing to be used
for evil, as all technology will and it is hard to safeguard against
it.  However, perhaps it is in the publics interest that companies
look and consider the effects of their products on society before
releasing it.  If surveillance equiptment can be used for bad things,
then perhaps its best to just not mass produce such devices than let
any hacker with free time break a system. Ubiquitous computing is only
enitable because of the free market will ensure cheap tiny computers
when they are high demand, but if the devices never reach the market
then their price will be unaffordable except to those who really want
to use such a device.  And if they spend that much money so they can
spy then it must be something really worth spying. But if anyone can
buy devices that are as inconspicious as a coffee cup and then hack
them to be surveilance equiptment then there is so much potential for
abuse, that maybe something should be done regarding the legality of
these devices become they become ubiquitous and cheap.

It mentions that if knowledge is public than it cannot be a weapon in
a small few, but does not mention the crime that could result if
peoples locations where known and broadcasted publically, even as just
surveillance cameras showing a family out and about. Perhaps it
assumes that the burgalers too will be recorded. This would have great
impacts on society, random and violent crime could become something of
the past, leaving only white collar crime and crimes of passion.  If
someone was being made a victim of a crime, a simple mayday signal
could find the perp's signal of their ID card, alert the authorities,
etc. Even just record the time and place and have all those who are
around flagged for questioning. This wouldn't stop a crime at the
time, but it would guarentee that the perp would get caught, which may
be sufficient of a deterrant to stop all but crimes of
passion. Emotional detectors may be recording a person emotional
activity, and then lawyers will argue the person was temporarily
insane from emotions and unable to act responsible (belive it or not,
but its held up in court where a murderer was deemed to be provoked to
kill a homosexual because the homosexual made an advance on him, and
because the reaction of murder was so disproportional to the
provokation of homosexual flirting, and he was a despicable bigot, the
murdered was deemed temporarily insane and not guilty of murder). At
any rate, the great effect that ubiquitous computing will have on
crime was not explored in this paper.

    * What is some possible future work?  Much future work. This was a
    * predictive paper of the future when computing power is trivially
    * priced, made enevitable by free markets: eg. digital cameras,
    * once prohitively expensive, are now used instead of balls for
    * mice. Some examples were presented where unknown conversations
    * were recorded, and solutions involving proximity were the best
    * solution.  Algorithms for proximity and locality of data must
    * then be developed.  Unexpected results of ubiquitous computing
    * need some serious development, especially since many clever side
    * channel attacks could likely be developed when a set of
    * seemingly unrelated ubiquitous devices interact. This field will
    * be more explored when ubiquitous computing devices actually
    * reach the market place and everyone wears a personal computer to
    * some effect. Also, much research into what those devices might
    * be, tasks they will perform and how they will intercommunicate
    * without interference can be researched. Specifically, humans
    * will want to limit the number of devices they must carry, and so
    * all their required needs should be performed in a combined
    * manner. However, not everyone will want everything, and
    * certainly not be able to afford it all, and with anticompetition
    * laws means that a random collection of devices may need to
    * interoperate. Recorders that use a central storage means that a
    * standard interface for connection, communication, interaction,
    * authorization, and even safe remote method invocation must be
    * developed. This needs to be able to extend to perform any action
    * that could be available in any device that may connect and
    * operate with any other device, that is forwards
    * compatible. Stardards organizations will take care of this,
    * however it is a really interesting problem. Perhaps medical
    * research will also ensue if it is correlated that extreme rises
    * in cancer has started with the invention of RF and the vast
    * quantities of telecommunications that are performed in and
    * around people without any longterm studies having been performed
    * priorly to the potential health risks (think smoking was
    * completely safe until it found out that it wasn't).