Has privacy become obsolete? I know that when I call for delivery, most places have caller ID and a customer database tied together. They know my name, address, telephone number and typical order. It would not surprise me to learn that they also have directions to my house and my tipping history.
At Krogers, I have a discount card. Works out pretty good–I often save 10% or more per grovery run. But there’s a computer somewhere that knows exactly what I’ve bought for the last several years. Someone that was curious could probably datamine and determine all sorts of other details about me…
Yes, I’m ignoring partisan issues also raised by the video. For this thread I’m more interested in privacy issues, and the possible ramifications thereof…
My Top Secret Gubmint File adds up to “Noisy But Harmless.” The only thing saving us from something like the video is the incompetence of the people who would want all that information. It would take little effort to totally subvert the system, rendering it useless. I do things like that as a matter of course. Whenever possible, I make sure that info entered for my profile contradicts information already in there.
The other way to counter this level of intrusion into our private lives is to flood the system with so much data that it becomes impossible to wade through it all.
At Vons they will print out coupons for your next visit that that correspond to your buying habits. Your ID Number is your phone number and my ex-wife still uses mine so I end up looking kind of disjointed I suppose. I have heard of people periodically trading cards with friends so that it screws with The Man or whatever :rolleyes: but I’m happy to get coupons that I may be able to use. The store can use the data to more efficiently stock things which probably results in lower prices or at the very least, less spoilage. I don’t think that Big Brother cares that I don’t drink Sprite anymore.
Maybe not. But maybe Big Brother allows Divorce Lawyer to do a bit of datamining. He learns that Cheatingspouse bought a dozen roses and a box of condoms last weekend. Oddly, his client, Moneygrubbingspouse, received neither flowers nor sexual advances…
You’d have to be pretty fucking stupid to put presents for your Sugar Baby on the credit card. I’m sure that it happens all the time but it can be avoided by using this thing called cash.
The big FedEx hub in Louisville, Kentucky, goes through as much data in 30 seconds as the NYSE generates in an entire day of trading. By 2010, there will be many more systems like it, and some that are at least an order of magnitude more powerful. How do you propose to flood them?
Rain dance?
Part of me thinks this data collection is a sign of the Apocalypse. Another part thinks it makes my life easier. The problem is that if it truly is evil, then by the time we know that for sure, it will be too late to stop it.
I don’t buy this argument. Don’t forget all the infamous quotes from decades past that they could see “as many as five computers in the world” some day", or Bill Gates’ saying a 20MB HD was more than any user could ever use because he could “write a page a day every day of his life” and still have plenty of space. Of course these predictions were horribly wrong. As computers become more powerful, so do the computers and software that can attack them. Those computers may seem unbreakable now, but I assure you, if enough of the right (wrong?) people are interested, they could get it flooded.
These sorts of cards have always bothered me for the very reasons you present. Of course, there is a trade off between convenience and security/privacy. Thus, my solution is to use invalid information for these cards. The local grocery stores allow us to enter a phone number instead of scanning a card; thus, to circumvent this, I use the number of a friend who moved out of the country years ago. Sure, they can still do their datamining on some phantom individual, but it can’t be traced back to me, and I still get my discounts… win-win.
Personally, this lack of concern for privacy concerns me. More and more do I encounter people with the attitude “if you have nothing to hide, why are you concerned.” This trade-off between convenience and privacy should not be taken so lightly.
You’re not the only one who’s nervous. Right now there’s a lot of energy going into researching data mining techniques that preserve privacy, and at least one of the newer textbooks has a lot of material on the ethics/social implications of data mining.
I’m expecting a few more big security breaches like the recent AOL search results fiasco, but things are going to get better security-wise. The most effective thing that any of us can do is to agitate for stronger privacy and consumer data laws here in the US. France and Germany already have them and they’re still lucrative markets, so there’s hope.
I work on large-scale databases and have for years now. I love looking at them and seeing what I can find. I am not being nosy, I need data for things like testing and I never blab anything to anyone. I could probably go to jail if I leaked out some of the files I work with.
That said, there are some very weak points in this type of Big Brother scenario. I used to work for a supermarket chain that pioneered the loyalty card program in the New England area. It was hot shit back in the 1990’s. The idea was that individual shopping patterns would be analyzed and then marketed towards in a zillion different ways. I played with the databases when they were in their infancy and I was fascinated with all the data that was there and the potential it held.
The reality didn’t match up to expectations. Even though the data was there, no one could figure out how to use it in a grand sense like they thought. There is actually way too much data in one of them to be all that useful. Sure, you can generate a list of people that bought Tide X times in the last 6 months and send them coupons but that is pretty mundane and not that attractive from a business perspective. That database now holds the data for millions of customers cross-referenced with 10’s of thousands of individual products. Doing individual tasks with the data isn’t that hard but the universe is just too big to work with on a daily basis. A Sunday addition of the paper with a boatload of coupons for everything is better for most uses.
Lets take a look at the other proposed uses. Health Care data is protected by a set of very restrictive laws that aren’t going anywhere. Receptionists can get fired and maybe even get in legal trouble if they leave a patient roster in plain view in a single doctor’s office. There are regulations all over the place like that. I could get fired if I e-mail myself the simplest health care file to myself and don’t protect it with PGP encryption.
Banking: These databases are already there. Visa, MasterCard and your banks already have everything in their databases. If they want to start doing wild stuff with it now, the time for that started years ago. Again, there are laws protecting certain data but I also think that they don’t see the point. ATM transactions can help nail your ass in court however.
Transponder based toll roads: This one scares me personally but it also serves as a good example. Some jurisdictions got the bright idea that they could issue tickets based on average speed from one toll booth to another. That usually went over like a fart in church and many of those were quickly repealed when people complained about Big Brother or refused to use the FastLanes altogether.
Invasive business practices disappear all the time when people complain about them or refuse to play along. That will never go away.
If you want something to be scared about, look to embedded GPS devices.
Data, not packages. The figure–which is actually per 30 minutes; mea culpa–is taken from the June 17, 2006 survey on logistics in The Economist (specifically, this story).
Given the corrected figure above, flooding that scale of data processor is feasible, although it’s going to take some time and resources. The next ones might be a bit trickier.
The flaw in your logic is that shares are moved in blocks of hundreds ir thousands, not as individual units. You would need to see how many transactions there were in the day.
I’m ready to believe that all this data collection threatens our privacy in an abstract sense, but I’m finding it hard to get worked up about it. Who cares if some database is storing what kind of pizza I like? I’m ready enough to tell you if you ask, after all. It’s not a state secret. I just want to know what particular pleasure in life I’m supposed to be getting out of my privacy, and how it’s threatened. Particularly when so much of this data that’s collected is never seen by human eyes, but just interacts, quite out of view, with some algorithm.
Well, as in the example in the OP, your health insurance company might be interested if you’re buying double-meat pizzas four times a week and have high cholesterol and blood pressure. Then they can check your health club membership card and find out you haven’t been there for months, and your reciepts show that the last pair of running shoes you bought was three years ago. You’re obviously not following your doctor’s advice to eat better and exercise, so why should your health insurance company pay for that bypass you’re going to need next year? They could cancel your policy or raise your rates, or as in the example, have you pay a surcharge for every double meat pizza you buy. Of course, then you go on Medicare, but why should we, the taxpayers, pay for your bypass when it was your own personal habits that caused the medical problem, even though you knew better (and we know from your medical records that you did visit the doctor, and he told you no more doublemeat pizzas, so ignorance is no defense), and now we have the data to prove it?
Yeah, this is one of those things that I find if I think about it too long, I start to panic and become useless to my friends and family. So I put it out of my mind, since I don’t really think there’s anything I can do about it. The genie’s out of the bottle, and like all powerful technology, can be used for good or ill.
There is no way they’re going to pay someone to sift through all the data looking for dirt on people. And even if they did, what are they going to learn about you? “Hmmm, so-and-so has been buying a lot of D batteries lately, her love life must be on the rocks…” Please. They may look at it and say “a lot of people who bought cheese flavored cheese-food doodles also bought devils food cookies and cheap beer, let’s put a display of junk food in the beer aisle to snag the people on a beer run,” but it’s not going to get any more personalized than that. The manpower costs to look at individual people would be staggering.
WhyNot, what I’m missing in your example is how data collection by computer makes the situation more sinister. After all, there’s no reason why today, without any prior data collection at all, your insurance company couldn’t simply call you up, measure your cholesterol and blood pressure, and tell you to do something about it or else. The data and what’s done with the data are two completely different things. In other words, the behavior of the insurance company is independent of what data they collect and how.
Plus there’s a contrarian side to me that says, “What’s so bad about your example, anyhow?” People should be made to be accountable about their health. People who eat as if they’re fighting the Michelin Man for the title aren’t doing me any favors, from a financial point of view. I’m sure I’ll get flamed for saying so – which more or less proves that any attempt at social engineering, of the kind premised in the OP, faces a massive uphill political battle. Hence my lack of real worry.