Policy Manager - DARPA Brandeis

Policy Manager is the privacy settings feature of Privacy Enhancements for Android (PE for Android), which is a DARPA-funded project seeking to improve the privacy of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). The Policy Manager allows users of PE for Android to learn and control sensitive permissions associated with the use of a mobile phone to various levels of granularity and depth. The main aspect of the privacy settings is to explain to users:

What data is being accessed (permissions)

Camera, Location, Microphone, etc.

Why it is being accessed (purpose)

For Advertising, For Navigation, etc.

Who is accessing the data exactly (internal use vs third-party use)

Company of the app, Third-Party Ad-Networks associated with the app, etc.

Policy Manager Features

The policy manager is divided into the following parts. Click to learn more about each feature.

UX Research and Design

Intensive user experience research and design led to the final development of architecture and interface of the policy manager. Many UX research methods were adopted and conducted that led to informing design decisions for the interface. See more: UX Research and Design

Key Contributors to Policy Manager Design and Development

Principal Investigators

Jason Hong (See website)
Yuvraj Agarwal (See website)
Matt Fredrickson
Eran Toch

User Experience and Interface Designers and Researchers

Judy Chun / Rituparna Roychoudhury / Shan Wang / Jessica Zhao
Ally Liu / Qian Wang / Aniruddh Iyer / Won-Woo Chung / Siqi Wang
Sam Kim
Jinping Liu / Shen Lu
Vida Zhang

Coconut Android Studio Plugin

Tianshi Li (See website)

Purposes Research and Development

Haojian Jin (See website)
Tianshi Li/ Judy Chun/ Rituparna Roychoudhury/ Shan Wang/ Yuan Jiang/ Yile Lu/ Mike Czapik

Policy Manager Engineers

Swarup Sahoo / Shawn Hanna
Mike Czapik

App Analysis and App Policy Generation

Mike Czapik / Bobby Zhang / Kunal Bhuwalka