@stakanov, I understand where you are coming from with the dangers of data collection and mining, and your example of cream skimming. This is an issue that goes beyond IT. There are no easy answers, and certainly no permanent answers. Every new technology brings new dangers. The motor car enabled motor car accidents. The telephone made possible telephone tapping. On the other hand, there are benefits that the drawbacks must be weighed against.
My feeling is that in the end, it’s people who will have to decide what is acceptable use of technology and what is not, i.e. laws, norms, societal pressure, etc. Of course that’s much easier stated than achieved, and I’m sure the debate could fill a tonne of forums.
I think that boycotting technology piecemeal is not going to be an adequate solution. It has to be dealt with at a more comprehensive level.
Tidbit: A friend recently pointed me to news where a German court ruled that overheard soliloquy is not admissible evidence.
Let me explain you the last point first. The episode of overheard soliloquy was not…overheard, but fruit of a “listening attack” of the competent authorities. In Germany, given the historical experience of the “real socialistic” regime on the soil of the former DDR (that made use of heavy surveillance of the population through the secret service) and also based on a tradition of warrantying the respect of invulnerability of human rights (at least on the paper and for obvious historical reasons) the law defines a privacy sphere of any individual (criminal suspect or not). Translated it could be called “notch of privacy”. This sphere - and the law is clear and detailed - cannot be violated by any official of the authorities by no means. That is: you can tap an apartment and video surveying it, but as soon as sexual acts are involved you have to switch off the surveillance. So the argument went that the guy was overheard as he was talking to himself in the car, and the talk was more or less an indirect admission of being the murder of another individual. This was turned down by the judge because "the soliloquy overheard is to be considered equivalent of “thought”. As individuals are free to think what they want, and the thoughts are free and there is no “crime of thought” it cannot be established if this indirect admission was “a game of thought” or a real admission of murder.
Fact is the judge did criticize that the public ministry did not base himself on other then these “soliloquies”, giving therefore way to a restart of the investigations judged too inconsistent to stand in front of a trial.
You see, this was really complex.
It is true that people will decide “with their feet” or better to say with their consumption behavior. However people “new best” also for tobacco, because crucial information and consciousness was not present in the population. So while I can understand the “gold fever” of the industry, I still allow myself some “prejudice” on the underlying dangers. The funny thing is that on the political level there is not really the know how, nor the will to face these problems. Again for obvious reasons. For these reasons, pages like panopticlick are nice examples to show and raise awareness about the consequences of our behaviors. This is BTW not a proposal of “tech-refusal”. I used a 3G phone to register an academic course and to check for train schedules nearly a decade ago on a display as big as a thumbnail. Already with my GSM I found out about providers able to mute my provider choices with SMS while on roaming. It was at the time a very unpleasant experience (since a cell phone is a very private object).
So the fact is what quality of data we allow to be generated and how easy we do “opt in”. Aggregated consumption data or personal unique identifiers. And the more data we generate, the easier it gets to do comprehensive data-mining. Some of the consequences are already visible (e.g. people have been denied loans on the base of non sufficiently proven claims of unreliability part of some mined profile).
So, I do not deny the use of technology, to the contrary. But I am quite horrified by the legal “free space” that opens up with a speed BTW that is ever growing, since state structures are static and technology and market speed hyperbolically.
What can you do to avoid mining? Simple, unpluck yourself from the internet. Doh, it is not a real solution of course.
There is little what anyone can do. Since we are in an age where co-operation rule there is little an individual can do. And for worst, most people don’t care about it either.
So the screening of individuals will continue.
And it is pondered that the cloud will gain momentum this year, making an ever deeper reach to everyone. Just see the application most people use on a daily base. Not sure if the desktop is as relevant as it used to be, but cellphones are what most are looking.
Doesn’t work even if you unplug yourself. You can be tracked even if you don’t know how to use a computer. Say I park at the shopping centre underground car park. It has number plate recognition to prevent people from parking there twice in a day. If this were linked up with the motor registry records, they could track my visits to the shops. Or your picture is taken in public and posted to a blog. Someone who knows you sees the blog and decides to kindly label you. The digital photo has GPS metadata. Now everybody can know where you were at that time.
There is little what anyone can do. Since we are in an age where co-operation rule there is little an individual can do. And for worst, most people don’t care about it either.
So the screening of individuals will continue.
No, the same could have been said for other human problems like slavery. But civilisation has made great steps in eliminating this. So first of all there has to be an awareness that there are issues. Then there has to be collective will to find the right balance.
It isn’t just because of the cloud this year or last. It’s the cumulative effect of technological advance.
It’s also not just IT. Gene technology is probably more dangerous if insurance companies decide to base their risk decisions on that data.
But some risk decisions are justified. It’s justifiable if I am charged a higher premium if I smoke, or don’t have a lockable garage for my car. What is not justifiable? Well that is the can of worms.
The technology is double edged though. The cloud probably had a role in toppling governments recently. But no single company can take the credit. If FB, Twitter or Google didn’t exist, some other companies would have.
Individual piecemeal shunning of technology is not likely to work. Especially if these actions are driven by minor issues (OMG, the pizza shop knows where I live) and don’t take into account the whole picture.
In the end you are reliant on the ethics of those who data mine and there will always be those who will use the knowledge they gain ‘unethically’, in some cases because they do not have the maturity to recognise the consequences of their actions on others, in some cases because different cultures have different norms about privacy, in some cases because they get a ‘kick’ out of being able to exert power over others in much the same way at stalkers do.
The problems are that often victims are unaware that what is happening to them is unethical and, even when they are, they become fearful or ashamed of having become a victim and so don’t tell others.
In other words, it is a human problem and technological ‘solutions’ rarely solve human problems.
In some parts it is economically speaking an externality (where in economy that stands for a damage (if negative externality) that you cause to the society, but the cost of which you are not forced to pay yourself).
The industry makes money with this data. The mining is done by them, but the data belongs to us. The damage they do to individuals and to their life they do not pay it. If they would have to pay an congruent amount of money to every individual whose data they are using, their would be ownership and the price would be determined by the value that individuals give to privacy. If nobody cares, the data would be not valuable, but if everybody cares a lot, the data = money and people would have an incentive to allow the use of it. You would create a price.
Kyoto protocol shows IMO that a similar system is currently unfeasible because the industry governs politics and not vice versa. So there is no enforcement at all and the market stays fictive. The same applies currently to the IT market. (If you think of it it all boils down to the very same: the “free” market does not exist. There exists only a well (sufficiently/efficiently) regulated market or an over regulated market. All the rest is IMO market failure).
But it’s not as simple as saying the data belongs to us. The problem is that even your public behaviour, if sufficiently well observed and correlated, becomes sensitive. As I showed, you don’t even have to actively participate to be recorded. The data correlation is something that data processing technology has enabled.
But this technology cuts both ways. For example you can find websites where crowd sourcing collaboratively correlates the number and identity of annoyance callers. So somebody who gets a missed call on their phone can go look up the number and ignore the call if it turns out to be a marketeer.
On 1/2/2012 12:16 AM, ken yap wrote:
>
> JoergJaeger;2425116 Wrote:
>> What can you do to avoid mining? Simple, unpluck yourself from the
>> internet. Doh, it is not a real solution of course.
>
> Doesn’t work even if you unplug yourself. You can be tracked even if
> you don’t know how to use a computer. Say I park at the shopping centre
> underground car park. It has number plate recognition to prevent people
> from parking there twice in a day. If this were linked up with the motor
> registry records, they could track my visits to the shops. Or your
> picture is taken in public and posted to a blog. Someone who knows you
> sees the blog and decides to kindly label you. The digital photo has GPS
> metadata. Now everybody can know where you were at that time.
Point taken. Today everything is possible. The phones are so well
equipped that i don’t know if someone takes a picture of me.
No consent needed anymore.
> It’s also not just IT. Gene technology is probably more dangerous if
> insurance companies decide to base their risk decisions on that data.
>
> But some risk decisions are justified. It’s justifiable if I am charged
> a higher premium if I smoke, or don’t have a lockable garage for my car.
> What is not justifiable? Well that is the can of worms.
I am not sure about that. Who will pay also a higher premium. The
risktakers, the not so skinny people.
Everyone who does not fit a certain profile can be made a risk factor.
Smoking sound like a justifiable reason, but everything can be made a
risk. Personally i don’t think there is a reason to punish people one
way or the other.
How about people that have cancer?
–
Windows, supports nearly all software, hardware, and viruses.
Remember the Rauhtage.
on the underlying dangers. The funny thing is that on the political level there is not really the know how, nor the will to face these problems. Again for obvious reasons. For these reasons, pages like