CS 8803 Experience log 1

Earlier this week, I came across a blog post on Twitter by someone who had a scary experience with AirBnB. According to the post, during a recent stay at an AirBnB the guests had found cameras installed inside the home, around private living spaces. Alongside this scary violation of their privacy, what was even shocking was that AirBnB did not support the guest’s complaint initially. According to AirBnB, a barely visible image of the camera in photos of the home was proper disclosure of the cameras on the host’s behalf. Therefore, AirBnB argued that the guest had consented to the above surveillance.

This incident received a lot of attention on Twitter. Major discussion threads revolved around the the guest dismantling the cameras and being questioned by the host what they were hiding, Twittersphere debating about badly enforced policies, and whether the photos were proper disclosure of cameras. Finally after a re-review of the incident, AirBnB agreed that the cameras were not properly disclosed to the guests [1].

This experience relates to several concepts from last week’s reading ‘“I’ve got nothing to hide” and other misunderstandings of privacy’ by Daniel Solove [2]. For example, as noted above the host had questioned the guest if they were trying to hide something during their stay. To this question, the guest and others on Twitter expressed a wide range of opinions as noted in Solove’s essay. There were witty comebacks arguing that it was not the guest’s responsibility to disclose what they were doing. There were others who believed that there were cameras everywhere, and that it was less reasonable to expect privacy with increasing surveillance and recording technology. Almost all of the arguments for and against the “nothing to hide” stance were revealed in the Twitter thread regarding the incident. The problem with the nothing to hide argument i.e. the assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things was also apparent in the way the AirBnB host questioned the guest.

Solove’s essay made more sense to me after reading about this incident as I could dissect the types of problems and harms that constituted this specific case of privacy violation (e.g. surveillance and intrusion) based on the Taxonomy of privacy. Previously, I did not have the pluralistic conception of privacy to unpack the issues underlying such incidents.

Although Solove’s essay focused attention on government surveillance, I believe parallels from the reading can be drawn for this specific experience. For example, as noted by Solove, privacy is not to be viewed as trumpeting individual against society’s interest (as in the case of government surveillance). Similarly in the case of AirBnB, it need not be viewed as trumpeting the host or guest’s interest over the other. Essentially, the underlying values and expectations of both the host and guest are to ensure a safe and secure lodging space. Therefore, an interesting research direction would be to understand how AirBnB as a service can achieve a balance between privacy and security for hosts and guest alike. This broader agenda would also require understanding individuals expectations and experiences with targeted surveillance in private living spaces. In contrast to data mining or mass surveillance programs in public spaces, how individuals feel about this new form of targeted surveillance in private living spaces is unclear. With increasing prevalence of smart homes and intelligent, recording devices becoming part of everyday life [3, 4], understanding the expectations of the users and how product designers can provide them with agency and control over their data is likely to be imperative in the near future.

References:

1. https://www.airbnb.com/trust/standards
2. Solove, D. J. (2007). I’ve got nothing to hide and other misunderstandings of privacy. San Diego L. Rev., 44, 745.
3. In today’s homes, consumers are willing to sacrifice privacy for convenience https://wapo.st/2CMEZpn?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.c0cf2d35917d
4. https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/03/will-smart-home-tech-make-us-care-more-about-privacy/