Goal: The discreet cell phone

The Internet has become commonplace. Anyone and everyone can use it at any time from anywhere through mobile devices. This expands the possibilities for information and action immensely. However, every use of the Internet also leaves data traces that affect everyday actions and are evaluated by many interested parties on the Internet. For the user, this creates an asymmetry of information. While the net and its components seem more and more opaque to them, they are increasingly becoming "transparent citizens" or "transparent customers". The Research Training Group aims to counteract this development.

Representatives of computer science, usability and economics from the TU Darmstadt are working closely together with scientists from law and sociology at the University of Kassel. Participants from the Scientific Center for Information Technology Design (ITeG) are Prof. Dr. Alexander Roßnagel and Dr. Silke Jandt and from the Department of Social Sciences Prof. Dr. Jörn Lamla and Dr. Carsten Ochs. Interdisciplinary doctoral topics are working on the vision of a new type of personal mobile device. From the hardware to the app applications, it is intended to support the disclosure of only those data that are released to third parties.

The new research training group aims "not only to contribute to better and more personally customizable privacy protection for users, but also to more transparency in the IT world," says Lamla, who heads the department of sociological theory at the university. One of the researchers' goals is to comprehensively strengthen users' competencies: suitable infrastructures should enable them to sufficiently understand the surrounding network and its components, to weigh up the supposed quality of a service and system use with all its advantages and disadvantages, and thus to assess its trustworthiness.

An important technical component for this is novel mobile devices that offer "maximum user domination" and will be developed in concept within the Research Training Group. Their advantages: Owners could use them to legally articulate themselves in the digital network, could more easily  determine what information they want to share with whom, negotiate their own interests with those of service providers, and control spontaneous networking. Roßnagel, who heads the Department of Public Law with a focus on the law of technology and environmental protection, explains, "The results of the Research Training Group should help to ensure that the fundamental rights to informational self-determination and to protection of telecommunications secrecy can be better realized on the Internet in the future." 

Contact:

Prof. Dr. Alexander Roßnagel
University of Kassel
Department of Public Law with a focus on the law of technology and environmental protection
Email: a.rossnagel[at]uni-kassel[dot]de 

Prof. Dr. Jörn Lamla
University of Kassel
Department of Sociological Theory
Email: lamla@uni-kassel.de