We are looking for Interview Participants

Do you work as a developer or a stakeholder in developing security and privacy-enhancing software like VPN, TOR, Password Managers, etc.? We would love to interview you about your experiences with assessing the broader impacts of security and privacy software.

We are a group of researchers from The George Washington University working at the George Washington University Usable Security and Privacy (GWUSEC) lab. We would like to listen to your perspectives on the impact that your software has on users and society.

Information about the interviews

• Your data will be de-identified, we may use short quotes from your interview at the most.
• We estimate that the entire interview will take approximately 75 minutes of your valuable time.
• We can conduct the interview on Zoom or any other platform you prefer if you do not want to use Zoom, no camera required.
• You can choose to receive a $80 gift voucher as a token of gratitude for your participation.

How to Participate #

• You can fill out this eligibility survey and we will contact you if you are eligible for the study
  

Eligibility survey

Context #

A lot of Security and Privacy Software are developed with the intention to have a positive impact on people, e.g., to protect them from surveillance, to protect them from vulnerabilities, to keep them safe, etc. However, there may be negative unintended consequences to the wide distribution of this software. For instance, the use of dark patterns in cookie banners and consent forms, the risk of bias in facial biometric systems are some examples of these consequences. We currently do not know how development teams try to mitigate these consequences. We want to understand how and if developers systematically prevent these consequences.

About the interview #

We are interested in your opinions and experiences with respect to dealing with the broader negative consequences of security and privacy software. The interview questions are designed in such a way as to understand your experiences and perceptions with handling the impacts of your software.

We are in no way judging your current processes and opinions, we are just trying to ascertain the underlying perceptions, processes, and responsibilities associated with unintended consequences in the privacy and security software space. We would also like you hear your opinions about how these impacts can be assessed and mitigated.

The interview will use a semi-structured approach, we have a bunch of questions to help us navigate through the conversation.

Example questions #

Some example questions that we may ask during the interview are

S1Q1 What solution/ tool are you working on?
S1Q3 What is your role within your development team
S2Q1 Who are the Primary users of your tool?
S4Q2 Does your tool collect personal data? if yes, then how do you protect personal data?
S6Q4 Who do you think should be accountable for assessing risks?

Data Handling #

We would like to record the interview if you consent to it. The recording will help us create transcriptions to analyze the data systematically after the interview. Here is how we will handle your data and transcripts:

The interview & data handling process was approved by IRB:

About us #

We are a group of security and privacy researchers from George Washington University Usable Security and Privacy (GWUSEC) lab. Our research is at the intersection of computer security and privacy and human factors.