Of Ulti, 'hajano', and "Matachetar otanetak datam'': Exploring Local Practices of Exchanging Confidential and Sensitive Information in Urban Bangladesh

Strategies of hiding information over communication media have long been an interest of CSCW and related communities. Most of the studies in this area have focused on various computational means of data protection and their vulnerabilities, and occasionally on social practices situated in the West. However, communities in the Global South often have a rich trove of vernacular arts and crafts of hiding information that might be leveraged to design novel kinds of privacy-preserving technologies. In this paper, we present findings from our three-month long original ethnographic work with various communities in Dhaka, Bangladesh that reveal a wide range of culturally embedded techniques of hiding confidential and sensitive information from their `others'. Our analysis demonstrates the dynamic nature of these techniques, the learning process associated with them, and their deep relationship with contextual politics that these communities are embedded in. We further connect our findings to the broader interests of CSCW around otherness, ethics, and democracy, and also discuss their implications for design.