Securing the Internet for the Digitally Homeless in a Pandemic

are before they go there,” McClendon said. As vice president at Google, McClendon led the teams that built Google Earth, Google Maps, Local Search, Streetview and other tools used by billions of people worldwide. As cofounder of CVKey Project, he has pulled together a team of experts in public health, Brian McClendon technology and privacy to help communities around the world reopen responsibly. The team is also making the app’s source code available to other developers to examine or download, upon request.

The CVKey Project Council of Experts includes Kathleen Sebelius, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and former Kansas governor; Allen Greiner, professor and vice chair of family medicine at KU Medical Center and the Medical Officer for the Kansas City, Kansas, Wyandotte County Unified Government Health Department; and Perry Alexander, KU AT&T Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the KU Information and Telecommunication Technology Center.

McClendon believes the smart use of technology can help KU manage the challenges of continuing its mission during the pandemic. “If we don’t do all we can do,” he said, “we’ll always be in a cycle of wave and close, wave and close.”

KU Research into Online Security for Public Internet Users Expands to Examine Effects of COVID-19

by Joel Mathis

University of Kansas researchers studying what they call “digital homelessness” have received an additional grant to examine how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting Americans who don’t have easy access to the internet.

Before the pandemic, people without their own devices or internet access often used local libraries to obtain those services, but many of those locations have been closed or greatly reduced their access during quarantine lockdowns. “The folks we’re focused on don’t have a ‘digital home,’” said Bill Staples, principal investigator on the project, professor emeritus of sociology and director of the Surveillance Studies Research Center. “That is, their computing lives are resource-limited, transient, less private, and more vulnerable to digital threats than those who own computers and access the Web through broadband at their residences. When libraries closed, they were locked out of a digital life most of us take for granted.”

“THESE PEOPLE ARE DIGITALLY MARGINALIZED, SOCIALLY AND ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED IN A SOCIETY IN WHICH INTERNET HAS BECOME A NEEDED UTILITY.”

Staples and his colleagues want to find out how—and if—people experiencing digital homelessness are coping. “There’s anecdotal information about libraries pumping Wi-Fi out into the parking lots,” he said. “Some libraries are helping, but we need to take a systematic look at what is going on.” The research team is led by Staples, Perry Alexander, AT&T Bill Staples Foundation Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Information and Telecommunication Technology Center; and Drew Davidson, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science. These KU scholars had already been awarded a new grant from the National Science Foundation titled, “Safeguarding and Enhancing the Experience Perry Alexander of Public Internet Users,” funded through NSF’s Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program. The two-year, $516,000 grant will support research about how people who use public internet resources—like libraries—navigate the internet and what security threats they face. NSF has now awarded the team an additional Rapid Response Research grant of $200,000 to look at how the pandemic has affected such users. Drew Davidson “We’re trying to get a before, during and after snapshot” of how the issue has evolved with the onset of the pandemic, Staples said.

As much as 30% of the American population lacks adequate broadband access at home. Researchers say this digital divide results from—and contributes to—widening economic inequality.

“I think this is an understudied population, and as such is a population that hasn’t been fully considered in the computing landscape,” said Davidson. “There’s an assumption as our lives move online that everybody can keep up, and that’s not the case. It’s important because the need is so great.”

“These people are digitally marginalized, socially and economically disadvantaged in a society in which internet has become a needed utility,” Staples added. “They cannot simply ‘work from home’ or e-learn new skills, nor can their children shift to ‘distance learning’ as millions have been asked to do. It’s like trying to get by without electricity in your house. It makes their lives that much more difficult and challenging.”

The new study will have three points of data collection. Users at the Lawrence Public Library—which has restored limited access to its computer lab—will be surveyed and some interviewed about their experiences. The researchers will also send an online survey to a representative sample of library directors across the United States to collect information on library policies and practices during the pandemic. Finally, team members will compile related stories from news sources across the country to capture what journalists have found out about was has been happening in their communities.

The team’s ultimate goal is to offer new tools to public internet users when they access the Internet, including development of a device the team calls PUPS—public user privacy and security. The device is an isolated, portable, virtual computing environment on a USB stick, designed to provide a “digital home” to users, giving them a functional, seamless computing experience from one session and device to the next. There may be non-technical solutions available, as well, as researchers examine the contours of the issue more closely from both an engineering and a sociological perspective.

“I’m really happy we have this multi-disciplinary team,” Davidson said. “I think there’s a lot of good that can be done.”

Information about and results from the project can be found at https://ittc.ku.edu/padlock/dh/.