Jean Camp [www.ljean.com], Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Abstract
Using Ethnographic Data to Evaluate Technical Design
Design for values requires an understanding of the interaction between values, politics, and technical design. In few cases is the interaction truly obvious. Even when the value seems clear, design for values can create unanticipated results. For example, privacy enhancing designs can be used to enable anonymous threats thereby decreasing overall autonomy.

Quality of service mechanisms are an example of a technology that would be considered value-neutral in its design. However, by drawing on the ethnographic research of Mueller and Schement, I illustrate that quality of service mechanisms may have significant social impact. Thus this work is an illustration of how ethnographic methods can inform technical design.
 

Biography
Jean Camp is an Associate Professor at the Kennedy School of Government, a Senior Member of the IEEE, and an elected Director of CPSR. Prof. Camp's core interest is in the interaction of technology, society, and the economy. Her interest usually fits within the design for values rubric or under the electronic civil liberties unbrella. It was this interest that led Prof. Camp from graduate electrical engineering research in North Carolina to the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon, and it remained her core research interest at Sandia National Laboratories, and continues at the Kennedy School. Prof. Camp's expertise are in Internet commerce and design for values. She is the author of "Trust and Risk in Internet Commerce" (2000, MIT Press). She is the author of more than thirty peer-reviewed publications on technical issues of social importance (e.g., privacy, reliability) and social issues with critical technical elements (e.g., content selection).

This motivation is reflected in her continuing interests in computer security, consumer privacy, and protection from fraud. She has published on electronic speech, computer privacy, and technical and social analyses of electronic commerce. See her cv for a full list of publications. Her current research agenda concerns the economic, security and privacy implications of QoS mechanisms, and the HCI implications of the human perception of the trustworthiness of computers. Her studies in engineering cost modeling and protocol analysis are common methodological threads woven through her work.

Prof. Camp came to the Kennedy School of Government not only to pursue interdisciplinary research but also to develop a concentration in information and telecommunications policy. Graduates from this concentration can make policy decisions grounded in technical reality

Before joining Harvard University Prof. Camp was a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories. At Sandia National Laboratories her work focused on survivability. As part of her interest in survivability Prof. Camp worked on a tool for use on the meta-computing platform build under the Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative. This tool, Lilith, was designed to provide highly scalable, easy distribution of user code across a heterogeneous computing platform. Highly scalable code can result in highly scalable security failures if not properly designed and implemented.

Prof. Camp received her Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University where her studies combined networks, computer science and public policy. These studies built upon her undergraduate work in electrical engineering and mathematics, and her graduate work in electrical engineering.

Prof. Camp's studies at Carnegie Mellon focused on electronic commerce. As a result of this original work, Prof. Camp holds interest in one patent and one patent pending on anonymous atomic transactions. In anonymous transaction the customer need not trust the merchant with identity information. Atomic transactions are fault tolerant -- meaning that the refund of funds in cases of transaction failure is automatic and reliable. Electronic commerce on open networks cannot be separated from cryptography. Thus her interest in cryptography policy, as illustrated in the IEEE Spectrum article Cryptography Policy Needs Another Look. This article is representative of her work as Chair of the Security and Applications Subcommittee of the IEEE Committee on Communications and Information.

While at Carnegie Mellon Prof. Camp was an intern at the Computer Emergency Response Team one summer. Prof. Camp was also employed for one year by the Information Networking Institute. Before beginning her policy research, Prof. Camp was employed at the Optical Interconnects & Computer Generated Holography Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Prof. Camp began graduate research in electrical engineering after having resigning her engineering position at Catawba Nuclear Station. Her research has been published in business forums (EDI Forum), Usenix workshops, policy texts, and a textbook on computer design. This range of venues represents her range of interests and competence. Prof. Camp has been invited to speak in both Europe and Asia, as issues of the social and business effects of information technology are of concern across the globe.