1. APPENDIX A: GENERAL SCRIPT/QUESTIONS FOR FOCUS GROUPS

APPENDIX A: GENERAL SCRIPT/QUESTIONS FOR FOCUS GROUPS

Hello all, and thank you for participating in our study! We have been exploring the idea of a “right to privacy” amongst ourselves, and we are excited to hear opinions on this topic from people outside of our team. Our goal is to be able to initiate a conversation, through which we will be able to hear each of your viewpoints about privacy and related issues. We hope that you find this conversation as intriguing as we do, and please feel free to interject with opinions, thoughts or questions at any time.

• Like (previous person) just mentioned, we’d like to start by asking very broad questions. For starters, the word privacy has many different meanings to many different people. We hear the word “privacy,” but specifically what does privacy mean to you?

• Additionally, which information do you consider private?

• So let’s say right now I want to know the male to female ratio at Rutgers. How would you find out this answer for me?

• So we’ve all used Google before, and you just did this search. Something interesting that we found was that you automatically agree to Google’s terms and services agreement. Were you aware of that?

• How do you feel about it? Some people tend to feel uncomfortable; some people think it’s fine. How do you feel? Why?

• There’s some people who want these terms and conditions to be up front, ask permission type; some are fine with the way Google’s terms are. How do you feel about this?

• How often would you say you read the terms and services agreements? Why?

• How do you feel about terms and services agreements?

• Do the terms and services agreements ever change whether or not you use that service? Like, would you stop using Google and use, say, DuckDuckGo because the TOS changed?

• What are your impressions of these documents? How would you describe them?

• Companies tend to reserve the right to change their TOS whenever they like, so they’ll change it midyear and then notify you that “we have updated our Terms and Services agreement.” How do you feel when this happens?

• There are sites where when you click on them, they have a popup saying “by using our website you agree to our terms and services.” Do you prefer this kind of consent, or do you prefer manually clicking yes?

• What do you feel about websites that have the popup? Do you like it when that happens? Or would you rather they not bother?

• Do you have social media? So let’s take social media and location services. A lot of social media will ask permission to collect location data and see where you’ve been. And it enables a few things, like your Lyft being able to find you or your friends being able to know where you took that photo. Do you have that enabled?

• How do you feel about companies having that information?

• What are all the ways you think companies use data? What are all the ways you think they get this data?

• Would you rather pay for services like Google or Facebook, or is the current system better in your opinion?

• Where do you think permission will go in the future? Do you think companies are going to be more or less likely to ask permission?

• Do you think you’ll be giving up more or less information in the future?

• What is consent, and how/when should it be given?

  • Must it be explicit?

  • Can it be coerced?

• Next, we’d like to talk about a more specific form of consent, the type of consent that certainly occurs between companies and individuals, but also a type of consent that may commonly occur between private individuals themselves. The type of consent we would now like to discuss involves individuals being recorded.

• For individuals recording other individuals, there are mainly two schools of thought:

• Eleven states, including California, have adopted two-party consent laws for recording conversations. Two-party consent laws require both parties to agree to the recording of a conversation. How do you feel about this?

• New Jersey is one of the other thirty-eight states which requires only one party to have knowledge of a recording. Do you tend to favor this?

• If you believe in one-party consent, what are some reasons why you might see the benefits of two-party laws?

• If you believe in two-party consent, what are some situations in which one-party consent may prove beneficial?

• Even amongst our group, there is disagreement about consent in extreme cases, such as a battered woman recording her abusive husband. Do you see a conflict between the values of, for example, safety and that of privacy?

• Should all recorded conversations be admissible as evidence in court? How about in order to obtain a warrant for arrest? What about to prove wrongdoing at the workplace or in an academic environment?

• Suppose the police suspect that you are plotting to commit a heinous crime. They are seeking information from your phone that may connect you to this crime. They want access to such data as your messages, your email, your photos, and your location data. We are curious about the level of difficulty that law enforcement will encounter in obtaining your data. My first two questions concern your belief about the way the world currently works in this area. The questions I will ask after concern how you believe the world should work, according to your opinion.

• Which data from your phone do you believe will be easiest for the police to obtain?

• Which data from your phone do you believe will be the most difficult for the police to obtain?

• Which data from your phone should be the easiest for police to obtain? Why?

• Which data from your phone should be the hardest for police to obtain? Why?

• Good afternoon! I’ve been looking into different aspects of privacy, and how the expectations of which may vary depending on the type of information and the different companies or organizations that may be collecting it. To do this, I’m going to ask you all a series of simple A or B questions, for which I ask that you choose one of the two options. We will do this anonymously, and I ask that you all close your eyes and raise your hands (yes, we’re going back to elementary school voting here). I will present the two options to you, and then ask you to raise your hands for each option. Ready?

  • Who do you trust more (more comfortable with knowing):
    • NSA or Facebook
    • Post office or Amazon
    • FBI or Google
    • FCC or Verizon
    • Treasury or credit card companies
  • Would you rather have the govt or a private company knowing:
    • your credit card info
    • your location at all times
    • your call history
    • who you associate with
    • what you purchase
    • where you’ve been sleeping
    • your political leanings
• Quick recap/explanation of votes above
• General recap of conversation/entire group: What do you think privacy will look like in the future?
  • Why do you think so?
  • Can you describe this in one word?

Table of Contents

• I. INTRODUCTION
• II. BACKGROUND
• III. RESEARCH DESIGN
• IV. FOCUS GROUP FINDINGS
• V. THE RESIGNATION CURVE - PROFILES IN PRIVACY
• VI. CONCLUSION - REFRAMING PRIVACY’S MEANING
• APPENDIX A - GENERAL SCRIPT/QUESTIONS FOR FOCUS GROUPS
• APPENDIX B - RESPONDENTS’ ONE-WORD DESCRIPTIONS OF PRIVACY IN THE FUTURE