Certainly, there’s been a lot of concern about this question, and we’ve already seen (sometimes theoretical, sometimes real) use of data in advertising and such, but that’s a far cry from, say, Google blackmailing government officials to establish a dystopian dictatorship, let alone get huge tax breaks.
What do you think Amazon and Google and Microsoft and the rest will do with all their information? Will they stick to “only” making obscene amounts of money at the expense of everyone except their top execs, or will they branch out, as it were?
Well, I think one of the biggest concerns is stuff we’ve already seen. Using the data to target people with ads and news feeds to influence how they vote, etc. Since people spend so much time getting their information from these sources, it’s very easy to create a customized “bubble” of information that can be used to influence people.
That’s bad. Okay. Alright, important safety tip, thanks snfaulkner.
One thing to always keep in mind is that a large business or a government is made up of people. And these people can do bad things. Amazon/Google/Facebook are immense. While the number of employees that can look at your shopping/browsing/messaging/etc. is small in percentage terms, the absolute number is still large enough that a Bad Person might be one of them, or be friends with one of them.
E.g., you’re going thru a divorce. Your future ex has a buddy that can access your browsing history, maybe even your messages. The ex can find out all sorts of stuff that will look bad in court. If vengeful enough they can plant false data, steal accounts, get you declared dead, and on and on.
You have a right to be scared of Big Data. You really need to be completely scared of the employees of Big Data.
I’ve been seeing reports that Facebook has been calling 911 to send police to the houses of suspected suicidal people. No warrant is required for police to enter the home on such calls.
I don’t see anything specific about the outcome of such calls specifically made by Facebook but such calls from other sources don’t always turn out well.
Worst case is along what Der Trihs said. Imagine the Nazis had big data analytics to predict who was Jewish/gay/communist/etc as well as those who was likely to be hiding or sympathizing with them. More targeted recruiting to your cause and harassment/imprisonment/murder of those opposed.
At the moment the data they collect is browsing history and mobile phone data. The next generation of phones will have GPS accuracy of a meter or two. There will also be a cascade of data from sensors everywhere. Those in the home will be very sought after. Plenty of organisations want the same sort of powerful databases that Google and Amazon have. The Internet of Things is a new opportunity, potentially monitoring every domestic activity. Just as your get free email and a search engine today, why you might get a free talking, listening home hub to help organise your life. An obliging corporation will look after the data on your behalf. Cars will soon be collecting data from every driver…to help tune the safety features and allow semi autonomous driving. They will collect it for free for you.
Then there is that other very personal set of data you will be your personal genome. I am sure the medical insurance industry will want to buy that data. What can they give you for it?
Most people have quite blaise attitude about giving away their data and their privacy as long as they get some benefit.
I look forward to the tide turning before too long. I guess we will have to wait for some scandal to wake us up and demand legal rights over the data collected about our lives. When will data rights become the new civil rights? We need a new intellectual property law that assigns ownership of personal data and who has control over it.
All the cards seem to be in the hands of governments, corporations and employers at the moment as they sweep up what they can.
In countries where the rule of law is controlled by politicians, governments have free reign and China is putting it all into practice. The Chinese people will have someone to watch over them to ensure they don’t have bad thoughts.
In the land of the free, employers have a lot of power and can collect data on employees. The linkage with medical insurance makes the employee vulnerable. If captured information is freely traded, there may emerge a class of unemployable people with no medical insurance coverage. Freely given data could be used to exclude individuals from participating in society.
There is plenty to worry about and we are just at the beginning.
Imagine if they could know exactly what works on you and what doesn’t, and influence your every opinion and decision to the point where you are not even making the decisions anymore, although you feel like you are. If they control your access to information, they can make you think how they want you to think, and then act how they want you to act. Imagine a personalized version of 1984.
It’s already happening to many people through all the fake news on FB. They’ve already got a version that works near-perfectly on the low-information, gullible voter, just imagine adding more sophistication and personalization and manipulating all your decisions that way.
You hardly have to imagine this at all…just watch any of the many police/NCIS/CSI series.
“He just used his credit card at T. J. Maxx!”
“We’ve got her car crossing the George Washington Bridge”
“They just logged on to Google from the Weston library!”
“We have a video feed from him at the National Bank on First Street!”
“She just bought a 34-DD bra from Amazon!”
One of the saddest things I’ve witnessed over the last thirty years is the erosion of a respect for one’s own privacy and the privacy of others. 1984 is here…and the vast majority of people don’t give a hoot. One indication of this is that the OP has to even ask the question.
The worst thing that could happen with big data is already happening. The information available to each individual is increasingly being customized. People aren’t being exposed to new or different ideas. At the moment we are being steered toward information sources that “match our interests”. In the future I fear that news sources themselves will customize their news to match the individual reader. Articles will be custom written by AI bots to match the perceived interests of the reader. After all, neither CNN nor FOX want to give up a reader just because they aren’t matching the reader’s political leanings. When the NYTimes (or other major news sources) automatically chooses which articles appear on their “front page” (or what those articles say) depending on the reader, we will have lost a critical tool we need to defend our freedom.
I swear they’re already listening to what we say around our smartphones and using it to pre-load search results or things like that.
I can’t count the number of times my wife and I will have been talking about something, and I’ll go to search for it on google, and I’ll get like 2-3 letters in and what we were talking about is one of the top results. At first, I just assumed that it was more of a coincidental thing- with so many million searches, maybe I’m just following a pattern that some good chunk of people is watching the same movie at the same time, and decided to google the place or actor. But it seems to be more directed than that a lot of the time.
There’s nothing they can do to you. Just don’t forget who and what you are. They may be doing things to who you think you are, or what you think you are. In that case, your own confusion about yourself is more important than data miners finding out what you buy. What you BUY? Geez. Let me know when you have a PROBLEM.
