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 5th. Homework will not be accepted after 3:00pm on that day.

• Part 1 (50 points): Revelations from the past few years concerning widespread government surveillance 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 government surveillance and privacy. Although we strongly encourage you to come up with your own question, you may choose one of the questions above. Then, design and conduct a 30-participant survey on Mechanical Turk to answer that question. You should turn in the following things:
  1. Clearly state your research question and/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"). Note that, by default, MTurk assumes you only want "Master Workers," which almost certainly will slow down data collection. To remove that requirement and/or add other requirements, click the tiny "Advanced Settings" text on the first page of the MTurk HIT creation page.
  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 recruitment 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.
  
  Because this is for a class assignment and is not considered "research," you do not need to get IRB approval or include the CMU consent form. You should still treat your participants ethically and pay them fairly for their time. You will need to spend your own money on this, but we don't anticipate this should cost you very much money, especially if you work in a group and split the cost.


• Part 2 (50 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 3 (9-unit students should not do this part. 12-unit students will receive between 0 and 15 points for this part): Write a 3--7 sentence summary and short "highlight" for one optional reading assigned for the February 5th class.