Papers by Sarah Spiekermann
Value-Based Engineering With IEEE 7000
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, Sep 1, 2022
Ethics and Information Technology, Aug 21, 2018
This article reviews the academic literature (1996-2016) that emerged under value sensitive desig... more This article reviews the academic literature (1996-2016) that emerged under value sensitive design (VSD). It investigates those VSD projects that employed the tripartite methodology, examining the use of VSD methodological elements, and illustrating common practices and identifying shortcomings. The article provides advice for VSD researchers on how to complete and enhance their methodological approach as the research community moves forward.
Social Science Research Network, 2022
Digital ethics is being discussed worldwide as a necessity to create more reliable IT systems. Th... more Digital ethics is being discussed worldwide as a necessity to create more reliable IT systems. This discussion, fueled by the fear of uncontrollable artificial intelligence (AI) has moved many institutions and scientists to demand a value-based system engineering. This article presents how organizations can build responsible and ethically founded systems with the "Value-based Engineering" (VBE) approach that was standardized in the IEEE 7000 TM standard. 1 VBE is a transparent, clearly-structured, step-by-step methodology combining innovation management, risk management, system and software engineering in one process framework. It embeds a robust value ontology and terminology. It has been tested in various case studies. This article introduces readers to the most important steps and contributions of the approach.
arXiv (Cornell University), Apr 28, 2020
This article gives a methodological overview of Value-based Engineering for ethics by design. It ... more This article gives a methodological overview of Value-based Engineering for ethics by design. It discusses key challenges and measures involved in eliciting, conceptualizing, prioritizing and respecting values in system design. Thereby it draws from software engineering, value sensitive design, design thinking and participatory design as well as from philosophical sources, especially material value-ethics. The article recognizes timely challenges for Value-based Engineering, such as the integration of ethical with functional system requirements, responsibility in hardly controllable ecosystems of interconnected services, active integration of external stakeholders and the difficulty in measuring the ethicality of a system. Finally, the Valuebased Engineering methodology presented here benefits from shared experiences collected in the IEEE P7000 standardization process as well as from a case study. P7000 1 was set up by IEEE to establish a process model which addresses ethical considerations throughout the various stages of system initiation, analysis and design. Index Terms-design tools and techniques, engineering ethics, human factors in software design, risk management 1 The IEEE P7000 Working Group (WG) has more than 30 experts with diverse backgrounds, including software and system engineers, but also in philosophy. The baseline for these experts' discussions was a P7000 draft that was written by the lead author of this article. This article benefits from learning gained from expert conversations in the group as well as more than 1,000 written impulses, critiques, and change requests shared in the standardization work group and collected in four P7000 commenting periods in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. That said, this article solely represents the views of the authors and does not necessarily represent a position of either the IEEE P7000 Working Group, IEEE or the IEEE Standards Association.
Social Science Research Network, 2005
Better-educated consumers feel even less informed, less empowered, less able to make choices, and... more Better-educated consumers feel even less informed, less empowered, less able to make choices, and more helpless in the face of ubiquitous RFID technology than those without higher formal education.
SSRN Electronic Journal
Digital ethics is being discussed worldwide as a necessity to create more reliable IT systems. Th... more Digital ethics is being discussed worldwide as a necessity to create more reliable IT systems. This discussion, fueled by the fear of uncontrollable artificial intelligence (AI) has moved many institutions and scientists to demand a value-based system engineering. This article presents how organizations can build responsible and ethically founded systems with the "Value-based Engineering" (VBE) approach that was standardized in the IEEE 7000 TM standard. 1 VBE is a transparent, clearly-structured, step-by-step methodology combining innovation management, risk management, system and software engineering in one process framework. It embeds a robust value ontology and terminology. It has been tested in various case studies. This article introduces readers to the most important steps and contributions of the approach.
2021 IEEE International Symposium on Ethics in Engineering, Science and Technology (ETHICS)
SSRN Electronic Journal
This article gives a methodological overview of Value-based Engineering for ethics by design. It ... more This article gives a methodological overview of Value-based Engineering for ethics by design. It discusses key challenges and measures involved in eliciting, conceptualizing, prioritizing and respecting values in system design. Thereby it draws from software engineering, value sensitive design, design thinking and participatory design as well as from philosophical sources, especially material value-ethics. The article recognizes timely challenges for Value-based Engineering, such as the integration of ethical with functional system requirements, responsibility in hardly controllable ecosystems of interconnected services, active integration of external stakeholders and the difficulty in measuring the ethicality of a system. Finally, the Valuebased Engineering methodology presented here benefits from shared experiences collected in the IEEE P7000 standardization process as well as from a case study. P7000 1 was set up by IEEE to establish a process model which addresses ethical considerations throughout the various stages of system initiation, analysis and design. Index Terms-design tools and techniques, engineering ethics, human factors in software design, risk management 1 The IEEE P7000 Working Group (WG) has more than 30 experts with diverse backgrounds, including software and system engineers, but also in philosophy. The baseline for these experts' discussions was a P7000 draft that was written by the lead author of this article. This article benefits from learning gained from expert conversations in the group as well as more than 1,000 written impulses, critiques, and change requests shared in the standardization work group and collected in four P7000 commenting periods in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. That said, this article solely represents the views of the authors and does not necessarily represent a position of either the IEEE P7000 Working Group, IEEE or the IEEE Standards Association.
and I delved into the huge pile of privacy technology literature that has been published on RFID ... more and I delved into the huge pile of privacy technology literature that has been published on RFID between 2002 and 2007 (kindly supported by Elina Ivanova). We could confirm that the main privacy and security threads pursued by the RFID research community are pure cryptographic works on tag-reader communication. Even though these are valuable technical solutions to tackle, I argue that if UC engineers claim to want to address user control problems with RFID then it is not enough to only think about how to bring traditional crypto onto low resource chips (in sections 3.4 to 3.7). Instead, RFID and privacy engineers should think more of the actual control requirements people have
Copyright is held by the author/owner. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part o... more Copyright is held by the author/owner. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee. Poster presented at the 12th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2016), June 22-24, 2016, Denver CO. Abstract A privacy pattern catalog provides guidance with respect to data protection requirements, to both technical and nontechnical personnel that are involved in the development of software that processes personally identifiable information. This paper describes a privacy pattern catalog that was compiled with the help of the structured-case methodology. The proposed privacy pattern catalog is an interactive online tool that classifies privacy patterns according to the privacy principle requirements of the ISO/IEC 29100. In addition to the ability to browse through the classification, the tool provides an option to export selected information into a Microsoft Word document for further use. A classification of...
2.2 Currently Employed Versions of Personal Agents in Consumer Markets PAs currently employed in ... more 2.2 Currently Employed Versions of Personal Agents in Consumer Markets PAs currently employed in electronic commerce and various software applications support different user tasks including: information filtering, information retrieval, mail management, application usage or online shopping. For shopping agents, a distinction is again being made between agents involved in merchant brokering (finding the best suited vendor) and product brokering (finding the best suited product) [Maes et al., 1999]. In this thesis a focus is being put on PAs supporting product search and evaluation. Given the definition of 'agent', systems which are currently deployed supporting product search and evaluation (namely recommender systems, shopbots and interactive decision guides), integrate a number of the agent properties introduced above. Recommender systems are used by online vendors to suggest products to their customers [Schafer et al., 1999]. Recommendations are usually based on customer knowledge accumulated by the system over time, or that has been communicated 9 see also (on 10.01.02) www3.activebuyersguide.com/start.cfm 10 Note that product configuration machines on vendor Web sites only correspond to the 'direct manipulation' by users; a product is constructed from its different parts, but there is no 'agency' involved in this activity. 11 Some scholars who defend a strong personal agent hypothesis would not agree that some shopping bot applications or interactive decision guides cited here are agents. These academics (e.g. [Maes, 1994; Liebermann, 1997] argue that agents must be able to learn ("watch over a user's shoulder") and must be able to act autonomously upon a user model. However, this is not an uncontested view [Nwana and Ndmum, 1999]. It is not adopted by this thesis.
Ethics and Information Technology, 2018
This article reviews the academic literature (1996–2016) that emerged under value sensitive desig... more This article reviews the academic literature (1996–2016) that emerged under value sensitive design (VSD). It investigates those VSD projects that employed the tripartite methodology, examining the use of VSD methodological elements, and illustrating common practices and identifying shortcomings. The article provides advice for VSD researchers on how to complete and enhance their methodological approach as the research community moves forward.
IEEE Security & Privacy, 2018
and Business Although drones are receiving a lot of attention, the protection of citizen privacy ... more and Business Although drones are receiving a lot of attention, the protection of citizen privacy is still an open issue. To this end, we demonstrate how basic principles of information privacy could be integrated with existing infrastructure to build a framework for privacy-aware unmanned aerial system (UAS) dispatch considering restricted areas.
Electronic Markets, 2015
Personal data is increasingly conceived as a tradable asset. Markets for personal information are... more Personal data is increasingly conceived as a tradable asset. Markets for personal information are emerging and new ways of valuating individuals' data are being proposed. At the same time, legal obligations over protection of personal data and individuals' concerns over its privacy persist. This article outlines some of the economic, technical, social, and ethical issues associated with personal data markets, focusing on the privacy challenges they raise.
The International Series in Engineering and Computer Science
The presence of RFID technology in everyday life is expected to become a reality in the near futu... more The presence of RFID technology in everyday life is expected to become a reality in the near future. Yet, as RFID tags enter consumer households and threaten to identify their owners' belongings, whereabouts and habits concerns arise about the maintenance of privacy. People are afraid of being 'scanned' or tracked with the help of a technology that is invisible to them and not under their control. To address this consumer concern standardization bodies such as the Auto-ID Center have proposed to integrate a kill functionality into RFID tags. The present article argues that killing tags at the store exit is, however, not a viable long-term strategy to ensure default privacy. Too many business models and services are already in the pipeline to use RFID functionality after a purchase has taken place. Economic interest and consumer benefits risk undermining widespread tag killing. As a response to this dilemma we propose a simple disable/enable mechanism. Our suggestion is to disable all tags by default as part of the shopping check-out process and provide consumers with a password that enables them to re-enable their objects' tags if needed.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science
This article investigates the conflicting area of user benefits arising through item level RFID t... more This article investigates the conflicting area of user benefits arising through item level RFID tagging and a desire for privacy. It distinguishes between three approaches feasible to address consumer privacy concerns. One is to kill RFID tags at store exits. The second is to lock tags and have user unlock them if they want to initiate reader communication (user scheme). The third is to let the network access users' RFID tags while adhering to a privacy protocol (agent scheme). The perception and reactions of future users to these three privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) are compared in the present article and an attempt is made to understand the reasoning behind their preferences. The main conclusion is that users don't trust complex PETs as they are envisioned today. Instead they prefer to kill RFID chips at store exits even if they appreciate after sales services. Enhancing trust through security and privacy 'visibility' as well as PET simplicity may be the road to take for PET engineers in UbiComp.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2001
Electronic Commerce environments increasingly witness a conflict on the subject of e-privacy: Whi... more Electronic Commerce environments increasingly witness a conflict on the subject of e-privacy: While marketers want to maximize their customer knowledge and grasp the identity of their online users, consumers often want to stay anonymous and not reveal private information. The conflict suggests that 'private consumer information' should be respected as a new search cost for consumers in EC environments. The current paper aims to 'grasp' the phenomenon of this new search cost entitled as 'private consumer information cost' (PCIC). The paper aims to evaluate PCIC by identifying its main drivers and their interrelation. An empirical study is presented which shows that three factors, perceived importance, legitimacy and difficulty of online requests made by marketers in a purchase context explain much of the variance of PCIC. Empirical data also reveals how different types of information requests drive PCIC. The types of information distinguished are product information, information on product usage as well as personal information. Results hint at the fact that consumers accept personal information requests to a greater extend than one would expect, but only as long as they improve product-or service choice. It is concluded that marketers incur considerable opportunity cost of information if they do not respect the nuances evident in PCIC creation and do not rely on them for the strategic design of their online communication.
ePub WU Institutional Repository
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2005
and at the European School of Management (ESCP-EAP) in Paris, Oxford and Berlin. Before joining H... more and at the European School of Management (ESCP-EAP) in Paris, Oxford and Berlin. Before joining Humboldt she worked as a strategy consultant for A.T. Kearney and later headed EMEA Business Intelligence for Mobile Internet inventor, Openwave Systems, based in Redwood City, California.
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Papers by Sarah Spiekermann