No Encore for Encore? Ethical Questions for Web-Based Censorship Measurement

Narayanan, Arvind; Zevenbergen, Bendert

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2665148

Cited by 16 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Another example is the Encore research project and how it measured web censorship around the world by instructing web browsers to attempt downloads of sensitive web content without users' knowledge or consent (Burnett and Feamster, 2015), potentially putting people in some countries at risk of harm due to these attempted accesses. In an unprecedented move, the Program Committee (PC) of SIGCOMM 2015 decided to accept the Encore research paper on the condition of placing a prominent note at the top of the paper highlight the PC's ethical concerns (Narayanan and Zevenbergen, 2015). 23 The next section (section 9.1) depicts a key tension in research ethics of digital data.…”

Section: Ethical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Data: Biases, Methodological Pitfalls, and Ethical Boundaries

et al. 2019

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Social data in digital form-including user-generated content, expressed or implicit relations between people, and behavioral traces-are at the core of popular applications and platforms, driving the research agenda of many researchers. The promises of social data are many, including understanding "what the world thinks" about a social issue, brand, celebrity, or other entity, as well as enabling better decision-making in a variety of fields including public policy, healthcare, and economics. Many academics and practitioners have warned against the naïve usage of social data. There are biases and inaccuracies occurring at the source of the data, but also introduced during processing. There are methodological limitations and pitfalls, as well as ethical boundaries and unexpected consequences that are often overlooked. This paper recognizes the rigor with which these issues are addressed by different researchers varies across a wide range. We identify a variety of menaces in the practices around social data use, and organize them in a framework that helps to identify them. "For your own sanity, you have to remember that not all problems can be solved. Not all problems can be solved, but all problems can be illuminated."-Ursula Franklin 1

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Section: Ethical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Data: Biases, Methodological Pitfalls, and Ethical Boundaries

et al. 2019

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“…The experiment was criticized as an intervention that affected the emotional state of unsuspecting users, who had not given consent to participate in the study [Hutton and Henderson 2015a]. This incident was followed by an unprecedented move by the SIGCOMM 2015 Program Committee 19 which decided to accept a paper on measuring censorship [Burnett and Feamster 2015] on the condition of placing a prominent note at the top of the paper highlighting their ethical concerns [Narayanan and Zevenbergen 2015], drawing further attention to the issue.…”

Section: Ethical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Data: Biases, Methodological Pitfalls, and Ethical Boundaries

et al. 2016

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“…The paper sparked a discussion in the program committee, the measurement community and even beyond that. This case has also been extensively reviewed by Narayan and Zevenbergen [6].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Ethics and Internet Measurements

Ham

Rijswijk-Deij²

2017

JCSM

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Over the past decade the Internet has changed from a helpful tool to an important part of our daily lives for most of the world's population. Where in the past the Internet mostly served to look up and exchange information, it is now used to stay in touch with friends, perform financial transactions or exchange other kinds of sensitive information. This development impacts researchers performing Internet measurements, as the data traffic they collect is now much more likely to have some impact on users.Traditional institutions such as Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) or Ethics Committees are not always equipped to perform a thorough review or gauge the impact of Internet measurement studies. This paper examines the impact of this development for Internet measurements and analyses previous cases where Internet measurements have touched upon ethical issues. The paper proposes an early framework to help researchers identify stakeholders and how a network study may impact them. In addition to this, the paper provides advice on creating measurement practices that incorporate ethics by design, and also considers the role of third-party data suppliers in ethical measurement practices.Jeroen van der Ham is a security researcher at the NCSC-NL since 2015. In his current research he focuses on privacy and security, as well as ethics in security research. He has published on ethical analyses of research and education, network monitoring, and semantic descriptions of computer networks and associated infrastructures. He currently holds positions at the TU Delft as well as the University of Amsterdam, where he serves as ethics advisor.Jeroen received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Amsterdam in 2010 for his thesis entitled "A Complex Model for Computer Networks, the Network Description Language", after which he worked as a researcher at the University of Amsterdam until 2015.Roland van Rijswijk-Deij works for SURFnet since 2008, and is a researcher at University of Twente. At SURFnet, the National Research and Education Network in The Netherlands, Roland is responsible for SURFnet's DNS and DNSSEC infrastructure. He also initiates and leads innovation projects in the area of Internet security and stability. Past innovation projects initiated by Roland have focused on DNS, DNSSEC, detecting and mitigating DDoS attacks, IPv6 and many other topics. Roland regularly presents his work in international networking venues, such as TNC, Internet2 conferences, IETF meetings, ICANN meetings, RIPE meetings and NANOG.Roland received a cum laude Ph.D. degree from the University of Twente in June 2017, for his thesis entitled "Improving DNS Security: a Measurement-Based Approach".

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No Encore for Encore? Ethical Questions for Web-Based Censorship Measurement

Cited by 16 publications

References 17 publications

Social Data: Biases, Methodological Pitfalls, and Ethical Boundaries

Social Data: Biases, Methodological Pitfalls, and Ethical Boundaries

Social Data: Biases, Methodological Pitfalls, and Ethical Boundaries

Ethics and Internet Measurements

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