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Entry tags:
Big Data
[I wrote this a week or two ago, in the context of a private e-mail discussion]
The frightening thing about PRISM, in large part, is the security holes. Which points back to big data for me - now that computers store and sort so much information, and it's so easily copied, it is difficult if not impossible to know who knows what about you. The information exists; I'm generating it all the time. I'm being photographed if I go out in public; we don't have a CCTV network, but after the Boston Marathon Bombing, all the stores volunteered their security tapes and masses of spectators turned in their cell phone videos. Sure, a few people could hold out, and probably did, but enough to make a difference? Probably not. We're also leaving our genetic information all over the place - shedding hair and skin, throwing away paper cups we've drunk out of. It's all there, and it's all public.
It's entirely plausible that many private companies know more about me than I know about myself, or than my close friends know. Target (a big box store) recently had to manually change an automated system that sent out coupons in the mail because its pattern analysis had gotten very good at guessing from a cluster of innocuous purchases that a woman was recently pregnant, and their mailings were often "outing" her to her family before she had a chance to say anything. What I'm doing when I shop at a big box store is in the public sphere, and I've agreed to let them collect the data by using a customer loyalty card to get discounts - I have sold it to them. (Although in some cases, I haven't exactly - they're using my credit card as a tracker, and what I am getting in return is the ability not to carry cash.) But when they share it back with me, I may be upset. I may essentially feel as though I'm being blackmailed with public information.
More broadly, I think we're seeing a test of the notion that "he who would sacrifice freedom for safety deserves neither." At this point, freedom largely means consenting to be relentlessly monitored; if you start rejecting all the terms of service that would have you sign away your rights, you're left sitting with a lot of rights and absolutely nowhere to use them except your own kitchen. It's not clear what the practical difference is. I'm a young and attractive woman; I'm looked at all the time, and judged all the time for the minutest details of what I'm wearing, and told by strangers in every circumstance that I ought to be smiling and must talk with them whether I want to or not. How is a blanket of public surveillance with implied but rarely stated compulsion going to be different from my normal life? Is it actually worse to be monitored by a centralized entity like a government, or a decentralized entity like a culture? That's the question we're starting to run into.
The frightening thing about PRISM, in large part, is the security holes. Which points back to big data for me - now that computers store and sort so much information, and it's so easily copied, it is difficult if not impossible to know who knows what about you. The information exists; I'm generating it all the time. I'm being photographed if I go out in public; we don't have a CCTV network, but after the Boston Marathon Bombing, all the stores volunteered their security tapes and masses of spectators turned in their cell phone videos. Sure, a few people could hold out, and probably did, but enough to make a difference? Probably not. We're also leaving our genetic information all over the place - shedding hair and skin, throwing away paper cups we've drunk out of. It's all there, and it's all public.
It's entirely plausible that many private companies know more about me than I know about myself, or than my close friends know. Target (a big box store) recently had to manually change an automated system that sent out coupons in the mail because its pattern analysis had gotten very good at guessing from a cluster of innocuous purchases that a woman was recently pregnant, and their mailings were often "outing" her to her family before she had a chance to say anything. What I'm doing when I shop at a big box store is in the public sphere, and I've agreed to let them collect the data by using a customer loyalty card to get discounts - I have sold it to them. (Although in some cases, I haven't exactly - they're using my credit card as a tracker, and what I am getting in return is the ability not to carry cash.) But when they share it back with me, I may be upset. I may essentially feel as though I'm being blackmailed with public information.
More broadly, I think we're seeing a test of the notion that "he who would sacrifice freedom for safety deserves neither." At this point, freedom largely means consenting to be relentlessly monitored; if you start rejecting all the terms of service that would have you sign away your rights, you're left sitting with a lot of rights and absolutely nowhere to use them except your own kitchen. It's not clear what the practical difference is. I'm a young and attractive woman; I'm looked at all the time, and judged all the time for the minutest details of what I'm wearing, and told by strangers in every circumstance that I ought to be smiling and must talk with them whether I want to or not. How is a blanket of public surveillance with implied but rarely stated compulsion going to be different from my normal life? Is it actually worse to be monitored by a centralized entity like a government, or a decentralized entity like a culture? That's the question we're starting to run into.