Workshop on Security and Privacy for At Risk Communities: SPARC

A PETs 2024 workshop

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While significant efforts have been made around security and privacy, certain users and groups continue to be excluded from security protections. Existing research continues to argue that existing technologies have mainly focused on the needs of the masses, and as a result, have excluded the needs of some users, particularly those who are usually marginalized or considered vulnerable. This lack of consideration leaves such groups at risk, sometimes excluding them from services and online or digital participation. Consequently, the security community has responded to this gap with the aim of understanding and addressing the needs of these users. There is now a growing body of literature focused on investigating the needs of specific users, exploring and developing methodologies to understand these needs, while some efforts have focused on the usability of security and privacy mechanisms offered by various platforms. However, there is still a need to understand what needs or groups of users have not been considered and to develop holistic research methods and approaches that can be used to engage with these users to understand and develop security protections that meet their specific needs.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, and community organizations that work with and serve these groups to provide a forum for sharing and exchanging ideas, knowledge, and best practices around working with and researching at-risk users and communities. In particular, the workshop will focus on identifying persistent key issues and challenges related to the security and privacy of marginalized and vulnerable populations, addressing the following themes:

• Security and privacy needs of at-risk users: Discussing and identifying the most urgent security and privacy needs of marginalized and vulnerable populations that may not be widely recognized or understood.
• Methodologies and approaches: Examining existing research approaches and exploring future methods for engaging with at-risk users in research.
  • Methods for researching within and with these communities (where they are not just participants, but `research partners’)
  • Methods from idea conception to practical and community-integrated / community-supportive solutions

The workshop is invite-only and will take place on Monday 15th July, from 09:00-17:00

Workshop Organisers

• Kopo Marvin Ramokapane (University of Bristol)
• Kovila Coopamootoo (King’s College London)
• Partha Das Chowdhury (University of Bristol)
• Rui Huan (University of Bristol)
• Killian Davitt (King’s College London)
• Nikhil Patnaik (University of Bristol)
• Emily Johnstone (University of Bath/Bristol)
• Chukwuka Madumere (King’s College London)