1st Workshop on
Surveillance
and
Usable Privacy
Surveillance
and
Usable Privacy
co-located with SOUPS 2026
| About | CFP | Organization | Contact |
The aim of this workshop is to develop a community of researchers who are interested in surveillance studies and usable privacy research, inspired by Alice Marwick's 2022 essay "Privacy Without Power: What Privacy Research Can Learn from Surveillance Studies". Surveillance studies researchers and privacy researchers often grapple with the same research topics but approach them with different framings, methods, and theoretical foundations.
Usable privacy (also known as human-centered privacy), as a field, is largely focused on empirical assessments of individual privacy behaviors, perceptions, risks, and harms. While providing empirical results and (sometimes) actionable recommendations, this research approach may fail to identify the cumulative, collective harms of minor individual privacy infringements. It may also propose remedies that (1) companies have little incentive/impetus to implement or (2) do not materially change conditions for online users (e.g., more disclosures or privacy controls). Conversely, surveillance studies takes a holistic look at power and focuses on identifying the actors (e.g., the surveillance agent and subject) within a given context. Moreover, surveillance studies considers collective harms (e.g., chilling effects) and the goals and incentives (e.g., social control) of surveilling agents, which are challenging to surface through a focus on individual privacy. That said, the larger power dynamics identified by surveillance studies work may seem intractable and challenging to craft into concrete recommendations.
Through this inaugural workshop on Surveillance and Usable Privacy (SUP), we hope to start a discussion between researchers from both fields, facilitate knowledge-sharing, and generate new ways of approaching our work within our respective fields.
We are soliciting two types of submissions:
One-page position papers (excluding any references) or provocations should describe completed work and motivate its relevance to the workshop theme or describe a novel perspective on the intersection of surveillance studies and usable privacy. Extended abstracts (up to two-pages, excluding references) should describe ongoing work that could benefit from feedback from people interested in the intersection of surveillance studies and usable privacy. If you are not sure if your submission is a good fit, go ahead and submit! We would like a diverse group of participants from a variety of backgrounds. The authors of up to five accepted submissions will be asked to present at a 5-minute lightning talk during the workshop. All accepted submissions will be shared with the workshop attendees before the workshop (excluding special circumstances). Authors of accepted submissions will be given the opportunity to opt in to having their submission shared on the workshop's website. At least one author of an accepted submission must register for and attend the workshop. This workshop is a non-archival venue.
Submissions do not need to be anonymized, can follow any template (e.g., double-columned IEEE templates or anything else), and will be reviewed by members of the program committee. Submissions must be uploaded as a PDF via the SUP 2026 HotCRP instance: https://sup26.usenix.hotcrp.com/.
Coming soon ...
If you have questions or want feedback on your potential submission, please reach out to the organizers using this contact form.