CAREER: Systems for Transparency in Personal Devices and Services

在当今这个个人设备和在线服务的时代，人们提出的许多“为什么”的问题都没有得到回答。诸如“为什么我看到这个在线广告？”、“我的应用程序是否将我的联系信息发送到其他地方？”或“为什么我的设备连一天都不能用？”回答这些问题的根本问题是透明度。如果一个系统是透明的，也就是说，如果一个系统提供了揭示其内部运作的详细信息，那么我们就可以开始回答“为什么”的问题。例如，如果应用程序或平台显示应用程序对从联系人读取的所有数据的行为，我们应该能够回答“我的应用程序是否将我的联系人信息发送到其他地方？”为了解决透明度的挑战，该项目设计了一套技术和工具，为应用程序和平台的行为提供更大的透明度。特别是，该项目关注个人设备和在线服务中需要透明度的三个最紧迫的领域-个人数据使用、系统行为和能源使用。为了个人数据使用的透明度，该项目设计了跨前端智能手机和后端数据中心系统跟踪个人数据使用的技术。用于智能手机来源管理的自动化工具框架和用于管理数据中心来源的服务构成了这一功能的核心。为了实现系统行为的透明化，本项目为Android平台设计了一个跟踪框架。我们的设计是针对移动跟踪的需求量身定做的，例如对应用程序和平台的整体跟踪，以及针对性能和能源的仪器定制。为了能源使用的透明化，本项目设计了一种基于活动的个人设备能源使用监控工具。该工具提高了对用户活动的抽象程度，为能源使用提供了以用户为中心的透明度。该项目提供了一个独特的机会，可以在多个领域推进最先进的技术-个人设备、数据中心系统、个人设备平台、移动程序和平台工具以及数据来源管理-重点是透明度。如果成功，这项研究将使用户、开发人员、研究人员以及个人设备和在线服务提供商受益。结果将通过出版物、开放源码软件和实际部署来传播。

In the current age of personal devices and online services, many "why" questions people ask are left unanswered. Questions such as "why am I seeing this online ad?", "is my application sending my contact information to somewhere else?", or "why is my device not lasting even a day?" are often raised but left unanswered.The underlying issue of answering these questions is transparency. If a system is transparent, i.e., if a system provides detailed information that reveals its inner working, then we can start answering the "why" questions. For example, if an application or a platform reveals how the application behaves in regards to all the data read from contacts, we should be able to answer "is my application sending my contact information to somewhere else?".To address the challenge of transparency, this project designs a suite of techniques and tools that provide greater transparency into how applications and platforms behave. Especially, this project focuses on three most pressing areas in personal devices and online services that desire transparency?personal data use, system behavior, and energy usage. For the transparency in personal data use, this project designs techniques to track personal data use across front-end smartphones and back-end data center systems. An automated instrumentation framework for smartphone provenance management and a service for managing provenance in data centers form the core of this functionality. For the transparency in system behavior, this project designs a tracing framework for the Android platform. Our design is tailored to the needs for mobile tracing such as holistic tracing of both applications and the platform as well as instrumentation customization for performance and energy. For the transparency in energy usage, this project designs an activity-based energy usage monitoring tool for personal devices. This tool raises the level of abstraction to user activities, providing user-centric transparency for energy usage.This project provides a unique opportunity that can advance the state-of-the-art in multiple domains---applications for personal devices, data center systems, personal device platforms, mobile program and platform instrumentation, and data provenance management---with a focus on transparency. If successful, this research will benefit users, developers, researchers, and providers of personal devices and online services. The results will be disseminated through publications, open-source software, and real deployment.