05-436 / 05-836 / 08-534 / 08-734 Usable Privacy and Security

Homework 3

Print your homework out and submit it in person at the start of class (3:00pm) on Thursday, February 6th. Homework will not be accepted after 3:05pm on that day.

• Part 1 (30 points): Write a 3--7 sentence summary and short "highlight" for each of the readings assigned for February 4th and February 6th. Students taking the 12-unit version of this class must also submit a summary and highlight for one of the optional readings from either of those days.


• Part 2 (20 points): The NSA revelations from the past year have raised a number of questions about privacy and security. For example, have people started using Tor since hearing about government surveillance? What type of privacy tool do people most wish they had? Do attitudes about government surveillance differ between people from the US and people from India? Can average people determine what is or is not included in "metadata" about their telephone calls?
  
  Pick any question of interest to you related to the NSA revelations or government surveillance in general. Although we encourage you to come up with your own question, you may choose one of the questions above. Then, design and conduct a 25-participant survey on Mechanical Turk to answer that question. You should turn in the following things:
  1. Clearly state your research question or hypothesis in a single sentence.
  2. Write one paragraph summarizing major decisions you made and things you kept in mind when designing your survey.
  3. Include the text you used to recruit participants, as well as your screening criteria (e.g., "95% approval rating on MTurk").
  4. Include your survey questions, including answer choices for multiple-choice questions.
  
  You may design and conduct this survey individually or with up to two partners (groups of 1--3 people total). If you work with partners, it is perfectly acceptable to submit the same recruiting text and survey questions. However, you should work by yourself to write the paragraph about designing your survey. Furthermore, while you will have the same raw data, you must complete the rest of this homework assignment individually.


• Part 3 (20 points): Working by yourself, present the results of your study. Write at most one page describing the results, which should include at least one visual element (e.g., a graph, a figure, or a table). Note that you should not include the raw data itself in your submission. Instead, your results section should provide highlights and aggregate information, as in the papers you have read this semester.


• Part 4 (15 points): Working by yourself, conduct a statistical analysis of at least one aspect of your data. For example, if you collected Likert-scale ratings of privacy concern, you could compare whether male respondents reported significantly higher privacy concern, or vice versa.
  
  You should turn in a single paragraph containing all of the following information:
  1. What were you analyzing?
  2. What statistical test did you use, and how did you choose it?
  3. What software did you use to analyze the data?
  4. Give the result of the test (including p value).
  5. Briefly interpret your result.


• Part 5 (15 points): Working by yourself, write 1--2 paragraphs stating your conclusions from the survey you conducted.