Call for Papers: Special Issue on Pervasive Surveillance and Privacy

Title and abstract due: 18 December 2021 (email to pvc4-2022@computer.org)

Full manuscript due: 15 January 2022 (via submission site)

Publication: October–December 2022

Pervasive computing is flourishing; smart sensors and actuators have found their way into every corner of our daily lives. They are deftly interwoven with each other and their context, making environments ever more intelligent and convenient for users. Sensor-enabled surveillance systems with various visual and auditory sensors are providing an additional layer of safety to our homes and our cities. Internet-connected appliances are automating routine tasks in smart homes to make our lives more convenient. Wearable devices are keeping track of minute details of our behaviors and activities to improve our health conditions. Augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) technologies are assisting people with disabilities to support their cognitive or physical capacity. However, these improvements and benefits come with potential costs to our privacy. Pervasive surveillance, even when carefully crafted, designed, and deployed, could lead to severe invasion of our liberty, autonomy, and well-being. Such invasions could occur, for instance, due to government surveillance in the interest of increasing public safety, workplace surveillance to improve efficiency or employee well-being, consumer surveillance by companies for the sake of profit increase, and more pervasively family surveillance by intimate partners and family members.

This special issue seeks to discuss pervasive surveillance and privacy risks, surveillance detection approaches, surveillance and counterveillance, and privacy-enhancing approaches to thwart surveillance attempts. The guest editors invite original and high-quality submissions addressing any aspect of surveillance and privacy in pervasive computing contexts. Ethical dimensions of the research should be considered in all submissions. Review or summary articles—for example, critical evaluations of the state of the art, or an insightful analysis of established and upcoming technologies—may be accepted if they demonstrate academic rigor and relevance. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Perceptions and expectations of privacy regarding surveillance in pervasive computing contexts (such as wearables, IoT, mobile technologies, smart homes, and smart cities)
Influencing factors on people’s perceptions and behaviors regarding pervasive surveillance and privacy
Impact and measurement of pervasive surveillance technologies, for instance in real-world deployments
Impact and measurement of privacy technologies aimed to mitigate risk from pervasive surveillance, for instance in real-world deployments
Experiences and challenges in designing, building, deploying, and evaluating privacy-enhancing technologies against pervasive surveillance
Systems, techniques, and algorithms for transparency, robustness, and anti-abuse in pervasive surveillance
Exploration on the societal impact of pervasive surveillance in specific application domains (such as domestic abuse and rental properties) or exposure-sensitive populations (such as children, older adults, and people with disabilities)
Legal issues, public policy, and economic impacts of the use and development of pervasive surveillance

Submission Guidelines

For author information and guidelines on submission criteria, please visit the Author Information page. Please submit papers through the ScholarOne system, and be sure to select the special-issue name. Manuscripts should not be published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. Please submit only full papers intended for review, not abstracts, to the ScholarOne portal. Abstracts should be sent by email to the guest editors directly.