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The GoodBrother COST Action (CA19121) on Privacy-Aware Audio- and Video-Based Applications for Active and Assisted Living (https://goodbrother.eu/) organized a hybrid conference on ‘Privacy-friendly and trustworthy technology for society’ that took place on 28 June 2022 in Zagreb, Croatia, and online on Zoom as well as YouTube. With this conference, we aimed to advance the knowledge on critical ethical concepts such as privacy, trust, and transparency of (AAL) technologies, contributing particularly by extending emerging themes such as privacy-by-design, overtrust, transparency-by-design, and personalized transparency. Throughout the conference, the participants explored links, overlaps, and solutions between current proposed regulations such as the AI Act and other enforced regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation and the Medical Device Regulation. The organizers invited interdisciplinary approaches spanning the social sciences, legal scholarship, ethics, and research in computing and engineering. We received a large number of submissions in Spring 2022 from the authors in Australia, the US, Singapore, the UK, the EU, Norway, and Switzerland, accepting 16 papers based on the score and the feedback from two reviewers with expertise in computer science, ethics, law, and communication science. The papers were selected based on their quality and the fit with the conference theme. The reviews were sent with the acceptance/rejection email, and the camera-ready versions had to incorporate the reviewers’ feedback. We subsequently invited the authors of the accepted submissions to extend their ideas during their presentations organized in three thematic sessions., This publication is based upon work from COST Action GoodBrother - Network on Privacy-Aware Audio- and Video-Based Applications for Active and Assisted Living (CA19121), supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding agency for research and innovation networks. Our Actions help connect research initiatives across Europe and enable scientists to grow their ideas by sharing them with their peers. This boosts their research, career and innovation. www.cost.eu

Cost Action 19121: GoodBrother The European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) is a funding organisation for the creation of research networks, called COST Actions (CA). These networks offer an open space for collaboration among scientists across Europe (and beyond) and thereby give impetus to research advancements and innovation. Many institutions around Europe participate actively in the CA19121 - Network on Privacy-Aware Audio- and Video-Based Applications for Active and Assisted Living, also called GoodBrother. Europe faces crucial challenges regarding health and social care due to the demographic change and current economic context. Active Assisted Living (AAL) technologies are a possible solution to support tackling them. AAL technologies aim at improving the health, quality of life, and wellbeing of older, impaired, and frail people. AAL systems use different sensors to monitor the environment and its dwellers. Cameras and microphones are being more frequently used for AAL. They monitor an environment and gather information, being the most straightforward and natural way of describing events, persons, objects, actions, and interactions. Recent advances have given these devices the ability to ‘see’ and ‘hear.’ However, their use can be seen as intrusive by some end-users such as assisted persons and professional and informal caregivers. GoodBrother aims to increase the awareness of the ethical, legal, and privacy issues associated with audio- and video-based monitoring and to propose privacy-aware working solutions for assisted living by creating an interdisciplinary community of researchers and industrial partners from different fields (computing, engineering, healthcare, law, sociology) and other stakeholders (users, policymakers, public services), stimulating new research and innovation. GoodBrother will offset the “Big Brother” sense of continuous monitoring by increasing user acceptance, exploiting these new solutions, and improving market reach. Working Group 1 on Social Responsibility: Ethical, legal, social, data protection and privacy issues Experts from diverse disciplines are analysing the ethical, legal, data protection and privacy issues associated with the use of cameras and microphones in private spaces, and how to manage multi-party privacy preferences. They also study the differences according to gender and cultural/societal background in the perception of these issues. This WG aims to establish the core requirements that AAL solutions must fulfil to consider ethico-legal issues and to integrate privacy by design and by default. Those requirements will set up the guidelines for the technical WGs (WG2, WG3 and WG4). The Workgroup goals are: Review the current European and international legislation and the ethical issues that underpin this on the use of audio- and video-based monitoring in private environments. Study the differences in the perception of privacy depending on the culture, society, gender and age of the users, and analyse the situations and conditions in later life, i.e. occurrence of a fall, which may affect that perception. Investigate the potential benefits and barriers of AAL technology adoption for people in need of care. Support the development of privacy-aware monitoring systems by a continuous exchange of knowledge with technological participants in the Action. Promote the consideration of ethical, legal, privacy and gender matters in the design of AAL solutions. Inform other WPs on the ethico-legal requirements in the design and development of AAL solutions. Objectives of this White Paper The objectives of this white paper are to: Define the relevant ethical aspects relating to AAL and distinguish these from the legal issues which are concerned with data protection and privacy as associated with the use of surveillance technology: cameras and microphones in private spaces, and how to manage multi-party privacy preferences. Review the current European and international legislation and examine the ethical issues that underpin these on the use of audio- and video-based monitoring in private environments. Study the differences in the perception of privacy depending on cultural understandings, social practices, gender, age, and health condition of the users, and analyse the situations through life, i.e. occurrence of a fall, which may affect that perception. Investigate the potential benefits and barriers of AAL technology adoption for people in need of care., This publication is based upon work from COST Action GoodBrother - Network on Privacy-Aware Audio- and Video-Based Applications for Active and Assisted Living (CA19121), supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding agency for research and innovation networks. Our Actions help connect research initiatives across Europe and enable scientists to grow their ideas by sharing them with their peers. This boosts their research, career and innovation. www.cost.eu

Ambient assisted living (AAL) technologies are increasingly presented and sold as essential smart additions to daily life and home environments that will radically transform the healthcare and wellness markets of the future. An ethical approach and a thorough understanding of all ethics in surveillance/monitoring architectures are therefore pressing. AAL poses many ethical challenges raising questions that will affect immediate acceptance and long-term usage. Furthermore, ethical issues emerge from social inequalities and their potential exacerbation by AAL, accentuating the existing access gap between high-income countries (HIC) and low and middle-income countries (LMIC). Legal aspects mainly refer to the adherence to existing legal frameworks and cover issues related to product safety, data protection, cybersecurity, intellectual property, and access to data by public, private, and government bodies. Successful privacy-friendly AAL applications are needed, as the pressure to bring Internet of Things (IoT) devices and ones equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) quickly to market cannot overlook the fact that the environments in which AAL will operate are mostly private (e.g., the home). The social issues focus on the impact of AAL technologies before and after their adoption. Future AAL technologies need to consider all aspects of equality such as gender, race, age and social disadvantages and avoid increasing loneliness and isolation among, e.g. older and frail people. Finally, the current power asymmetries between the target and general populations should not be underestimated nor should the discrepant needs and motivations of the target group and those developing and deploying AAL systems. Whilst AAL technologies provide promising solutions for the health and social care challenges, they are not exempt from ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI). A set of ELSI guidelines is needed to integrate these factors at the research and development stage.

Mobile devices with health-related apps hold the potential for increasing the quality and efficiency of healthcare services. Two years of the COVID-19 pandemic have put additional stress on already struggling healthcare systems around the world, representing an opportunity for digital tools and e-health solutions to step in. This paper analyses acceptability of three mobile health solutions in Croatia and its relationship with public trust. Each of the apps, Health Portal, Stop COVID-19 and CovidGO, had their own paths to the users, paved by provided information, promotion existence and dynamics, as well as the impact of public actions, such as media appearances of authority figures mentioning the apps. Health Portal and Stop COVID-19 apps gained momentum as well as the national uptake of EU digital COVID certificates, for which CovidGO app was instrumental. Needing to use one app, users realized there are other m-health apps published by the Ministry of Health at the global app stores, which many chose to download as well. This demonstrates a certain level of citizens’ trust to the offered solutions.