Security and Privacy Implications of Pervasive Memory Augmentation

Pervasive computing is beginning to offer the potential to rethink and redefine how technology can support human memory augmentation. For example, the emergence of widespread pervasive sensing, personal recording technologies, and systems for the quantified self are creating an environment in which it's possible to capture fine-grained traces of many aspects of human activity. Contemporary psychology theories suggest that these traces can then be used to manipulate our ability to recall--to both reinforce and attenuate human memories. Here, the authors consider the privacy and security implications of using pervasive computing to augment human memory. They describe a number of scenarios, outline the key architectural building blocks, and identify entirely new types of security and privacy threats-namely, those related to data security (experience provenance), data management (establishing new paradigms for digital memory ownership), data integrity (memory attenuation and recall-induced forgetting), and bystander privacy. Together, these threats present compelling research challenges for the pervasive computing research community. This article is part of a special issue on privacy and security.