The Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding the project for three years with 1.23 million euros.

In the analog world, we act instinctively: in a private conversation, we tilt our heads towards each other, lower our voices or stand aside to read a message alone. If someone violates our privacy, our senses usually let us know. However, if we are online, this intuition fails. Together with social psychologists from the University of Duisburg-Essen (consortium leader), ethicists from the University of Passau and the International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW) at the University of Tübingen, mechanisms are being developed that lead to greater data protection competence among users and strengthen the self-protection of their own privacy in consent processes. "The specific legal issues of the project are the effects of such mechanisms on the conditions for the realization of fundamental rights and the possibilities of shaping them in a way that promotes fundamental rights," says Priv.-Doz. Dr. Christian Geminn, lawyer and managing director of the project group for constitutionally compatible technology design (provet).

Some groups of people are often particularly poorly protected in terms of their privacy in the digital world: For example, people who are cognitively impaired or do not speak the local language well enough. They are inhibited in their ability to make an informed decision about the use of their data. "A central task of the project is therefore to rethink the concept of informed consent in relation to vulnerable groups," says Luisa Schmied, research associate in the project group for constitutionally compatible technology design (provet).

The aim of the project is to increase awareness of the disclosure of private data in order to avoid possible negative consequences. Based on the results of the study, the researchers are developing suitable signals that, for example, attract attention visually or acoustically and thus prevent people from agreeing to the collection of data too quickly. Together, they are looking for ways to make digital violations of privacy just as instinctively perceptible as in analog life.

Contact:

Luisa Schmied
University of Kassel
Scientific Center for Information Technology Design (ITeG)
Email: Luisa.schmied[at]uni-kassel[dot]de