# Examining the Landscape of Digital Safety and Privacy Assistance
for Black Communities

Nikita Samarin
UC Berkeley  Aparna Krishnan
UT Austin  Moses Namara
Clemson University  Joanne Ma
UC Berkeley  Elissa M. Redmiles
Max Planck Institute for Software Systems

###### Abstract

Recent events have placed a renewed focus on the issue of racial justice in
the United States and other countries. One dimension of this issue that has
received considerable attention is the security and privacy threats and
vulnerabilities faced by the communities of color.

Our study focuses on community-level advocates who organize workshops,
clinics, and other initiatives that inform Black communities about existing
digital safety and privacy threats and ways to mitigate against them.
Additionally, we aim to understand the online security and privacy needs and
attitudes of participants who partake in these initiatives. We hope that by
understanding how advocates work in different contexts and what teaching
methods are effective, we can help other digital safety experts and activists
become advocates within their communities.

Copyright is held by the author/owner. Permission to make digital or hard
copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted
without fee.

_USENIX Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS)_ 2021\.
August 8–10, 2021, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

##  1 Introduction

After the death of George Floyd in May 2020, a series of large-scale protests
against police brutality and racism took place across the cities in the United
States and later in other countries [8]. The demonstrations, as well as the
law enforcement response against the protesters, have underscored the security
and privacy threats faced by communities of color [17].

However, these threats are anything but new. Over the years, researchers in
various fields have published numerous articles, reports, and journalistic
pieces discussing the disproportionate impact of digital safety and privacy
threats on the communities of color, including the heightened risk of
surveillance of online [12] and real-world activities [16], online harassment
[13], propaganda and disinformation [14], and biases in algorithmic decision-
making [5]. These threats, which heighten existing inequalities and often
result from actions by law enforcement and other state actors [18], violate
the principles laid out in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human
Rights [1].

This study aims to understand the existing approaches to educating members of
Black communities in the United States about their online security and privacy
and assess how effective these approaches are. As a case example, we focus on
community-level advocates who organize workshops, clinics, and other
initiatives that inform members of Black communities about existing digital
safety and privacy threats and ways to mitigate against them. Through
interviews with advocates from civil society groups and grassroots movements
that focus on the issues of digital safety and racial injustice, we plan to
answer the following research questions:

  * •

RQ1: What are the practices that advocates use to organize digital safety and
privacy initiatives for members of Black communities?

  * •

RQ2: What are the challenges that advocates encounter when organizing these
initiatives?

  * •

RQ3: How do advocates measure the success of the initiatives that they
organize?

  * •

RQ4: What is the efficacy of these initiatives in improving the digital safety
and privacy for their intended audience, as perceived by the advocates and the
participants of these initiatives?

Additionally, we aim to observe these practices in-situ by attending events
hosted by the advocates and understand the online security and privacy needs
and attitudes of participants who take part in these events. We hope that by
understanding how advocates work in different contexts and what teaching
methods are effective, we can help other digital safety experts and activists
become advocates within their communities.

##  2 Related Work

Prior work has demonstrated variability in online security and privacy
experiences and concerns based on race and ethnicity. A 2019 study by the Pew
Research Center has reported that Black Americans are more likely to
experience social media or email breaches than their white counterparts (20%
vs. 6%) [2]. There are also differences in the perceived threat actor of
security and privacy risks, with Black Americans being more likely than white
Americans to believe that the government is tracking their activities online
(60% vs. 43%) [2] and more than three times as likely to say they are
concerned about being unfairly targeted by law enforcement (73% vs. 23%) [9].
Finally, there is a difference in the impact of security and privacy threats
on members of different racial and ethnic groups. For instance, Black
Americans are more likely to face discrimination by algorithmic decision-
making processes, leading to a reduction in healthcare [10] or a higher risk
of being misidentified by a facial recognition algorithm in a criminal
investigation case [7].

We believe that the variability of these factors and the unique nature of
digital safety threats translate into differences between the security and
privacy assistance and education required for racial and ethnic minority
groups compared to other populations. Furthermore, a recent study by Boyd et
al. examining the security and privacy advice given to Black Lives Matter
protesters has emphasized the need for future work to “further investigate and
codify best practices for […] community-based activist trainings” [3].

Some studies have also explored best practices for improving the digital
safety of targeted individuals and groups by providing personalized assistance
from trained teams of technologists and security experts. Such computer
security clinics currently exist for victims of intimate partner violence [6],
journalists [11], activists [15], and politically-vulnerable organizations
[4]. Despite the increase in the prevalence of such research, no academic
study known to us has explored the best practices for improving the security
and privacy of Black communities in the United States using a participatory
research design. Our work, therefore, will contribute to the academic
literature on the security and privacy needs of underserved communities and
serve as a step towards the reduction of racial inequality caused by the
disproportionate impact of security and privacy threats.

##  3 Methodology

The study consists of three parts: an observational study, interviews with
advocates, and interviews with participants. We will complete all parts of the
study remotely to mitigate COVID-19 transmission risks.

To achieve our research goals, we will be closely collaborating with Matt
Mitchell and Sarah Aoun from CryptoHarlem, a digital surveillance clinic that
organizes impromptu workshops teaching basic cryptography tools to the
predominately African American community in upper
Manhattan.111https://www.cryptoharlem.com/ Mitchell and Aoun will discuss
their experiences leading workshops at CryptoHarlem and, through snowball
sampling, introduce us to other community-level advocates and facilitate the
recruitment of participants for our interviews.

###  3.1 Observational Study

Alongside the interviews, our research team will remotely participate in the
workshops, clinics, and other initiatives hosted by advocates. 222These
initiatives have been traditionally held in person but have since moved online
due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, providing the opportunity for us to
attend these events remotely. We shall adopt a "fly-on-the-wall" observation
technique in order to note any relevant practices that occur during those
events, such as the topic of the session, online platform used for content
delivery, duration of the event, type of interactions between the audience and
the facilitator, and so on. The findings from this part of the study will
complement the results that we obtain from the interviews.

To ensure that we only perform observation of public behavior, we will observe
events that are accessible to anyone who has a computer, Internet access, and,
possibly, a social media account. Examples of such events include educational
videos live-streamed on Twitch, Youtube, or Facebook available to all platform
members. We will use the same criteria when watching the recordings of past
events.

###  3.2 Interviews with Advocates

To gain a better understanding of the normative landscape of approaches used
to inform members of Black communities about online security and privacy
threats, we will perform an interview study with digital-safety advocates
working at the community level. These interviews will also allow us to learn
about the challenges that advocates face when they organize educational
activities and the metrics that they use to measure the success of their
efforts.

####  3.2.1 Subject Population

We will use the following criteria to select advocates to interview:

  1. 1.

An “advocate” organizes, helps organize, or works with someone directly who
organizes initiatives, including but not limited to: workshops, meetups,
trainings, conferences, clinics, consultations, and other types of events and
activities.

  2. 2.

The organized initiative focuses at least partially on digital safety, online
security, or privacy threat mitigation strategies applicable for individuals
and communities.

  3. 3.

The advocates will decide themselves whether their initiative focuses on
digital safety and privacy, to avoid the researchers imposing a definition
onto them.

  4. 4.

The target audience for the initiative should primarily include members of a
Black community.

  5. 5.

The initiative takes place on a regular basis, i.e., is held more than once
with different participants.

  6. 6.

The initiative takes place within the borders of the U.S. (if in person), or
the advocate resides in the U.S. (if online).

We expect to interview at least 12 advocates, who will be initially identified
by our partner organization CryptoHarlem. Mitchell and Aoun, who lead
CryptoHarlem, will send prospective participants an invitation to complete a
screening survey to determine their eligibility according to the criteria that
we outline above. Respondents will also answer demographic questions and
indicate their preferred contact information, allowing us to reach out to them
directly to schedule the interview. We will compensate each advocate with $30
once we complete the interview and ask them to invite other prospective
participants.

####  3.2.2 Interview Guide

We will conduct semi-structured interviews lasting around 50 minutes to gain a
better understanding of the normative landscape of approaches used to inform
members of Black communities about online security and privacy threats. We
will focus on four topics relevant to our research questions:

  * •

Motivation.

    * –

How did you first get involved with this type of work?

    * –

What does ‘digital safety and privacy’ mean to you personally?

    * –

What motivates you to do this work on a regular basis?

  * •

Experiences with running the events.

    * –

How do you go about organizing a typical event you run in your organization?

    * –

What are the most challenging aspects of this experience?

    * –

Which outreach strategies do you use to promote your events?

    * –

How many volunteers and supporting staff do you have to help you run the
events?

    * –

Could you tell me about the funding that you require to run the events?

  * •

Teaching methods.

    * –

How do you choose the topic for a typical event you run in your organization?

    * –

After you have selected a topic, how do you go about preparing to cover it
during the event?

  * •

Success metrics.

    * –

How would you define ‘success’ in the work that you do?

    * –

What is the overarching goal that your events are trying to achieve?

    * –

What makes you say to yourself “that was a good event”?

###  3.3 Interviews with participants

Additionally, we aim to evaluate the efficacy of these educational
initiatives—including workshops, meetups, consultations, and other
activities—organized by advocates in leading to the adoption of secure online
behaviors by members of Black communities. To this end, we will conduct
interviews with participants of digital safety initiatives to understand their
online security and privacy attitudes, needs, and concerns, as well as their
experiences with the advocate-led initiatives. Both the interviews with
community-level advocates and participants will help foster our understanding
of how to address security- and privacy-related needs more effectively.

####  3.3.1 Subject Population

We will use the following criterion to select participants to interview:

  1. 1.

A “participant” is someone who previously took part in an initiative organized
by an “advocate.”

We aim to interview 3 to 5 participants per single initiative, and we expect
to focus on at least three different types of initiatives. We will ask
Mitchell and Aoun, as well as other advocates we interview, to help us reach
out to the attendees of their events by sending an invitation to our screening
survey. As before, respondents will answer demographic questions and indicate
their preferred contact information, allowing us to reach out to them directly
to schedule the interview. At the end of the interview, we will compensate
each interviewee with $20 for their participation in the study.

####  3.3.2 Interview Guide

We will conduct semi-structured interviews lasting around 30 minutes to
explore the experiences of participants attending advocate-led initiatives and
their perceptions and attitudes of digital safety and privacy. In particular,
we will focus on the following three topics:

  * •

Background and finding out about events.

    * –

How did you find out about the workshop in the first place?

    * –

What motivated you to attend the workshop?

    * –

Was there anything specific that you wanted to get out of attending the
workshop?

    * –

Have you attended workshops from this organization or another one since the
first workshop?

  * •

Experiences with participating in the events.

    * –

Could you tell me about your experiences attending one of the workshops?

    * –

Based on your experience attending the workshop, what were the key lessons
that you learned?

    * –

How easy or hard was it for you to understand the material taught in the
workshop?

    * –

How helpful or unhelpful did you find the course material taught in the
workshop?

    * –

Would you recommend this workshop to a friend or a colleague?

  * •

Privacy and security threats.

    * –

What does ‘digital safety and privacy’ mean to you personally?

    * –

When you think about ways you keep yourself safe, what things come to mind?

    * –

What kind of threats or risks do you worry about?

    * –

Were there any specific concerns about your digital safety or privacy that led
you to attend the workshop?

    * –

Are there any other concerns that you felt were not answered by attending
these events?

###  3.4 Ethics

We will record audio from the interviews for transcription, coding, and
analysis. The raw audio recordings will be securely stored and subsequently
deleted as soon we finish transcribing them. We will also remove any sensitive
and personally identifiable information contained in the interviews as part of
the transcription process. Additionally, we will assign unique random
identifiers to connect the survey responses and interview transcripts to the
same participants; the survey responses, interview data, and the identifiers
will be stored separately from any personally identifiable information.

Our team has done extensive human subjects research and has years of research
experience in the privacy and security domain. All members of our research
team have performed or will perform the Responsible Research and Social &
Behavioral Research CITI Program training, or equivalent. The study is
currently undergoing the Institutional Review Board (IRB) review process at
the University of California, Berkeley (under the protocol ID: 2021-02-14070).

## Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the financial support of the Center for Technology, Society &
Policy (CTSP) and the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) at the
University of California, Berkeley. Additionally, we would like to thank Matt
Mitchell, Sarah Aoun, and Sarah Chasins for their assistance with this
project.

## References

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