The dark side of big data

https://www.martinruenz.de/article/data-privacy/2016/02/14/the-dark-side-of-big-data.html

by guy-brush • 10 years ago

115 24 10 years ago

awakeasleep2• 10 years ago

I wish there was a book detailing historic government abuses of data.

It should focus on:

  what data was used, 
  how was that data collected
  what the original purpose of the collection 
  How did the data move from the collecting administration
    to abusive administration

It seems like there should be a wealth of historical examples. What data did the Stasi have, Mao's china, the purges of intellectuals in russia and SE Asia. I bet there are even records of Torquemada's Inquisition.

It'd be interesting to learn something like guilt has historically been assigned based on friendships or family relationships rather than evidence of wrongdoing- that would be pretty damning in the context of metadata collection.

metasean• 10 years ago

Groups, government or otherwise, have done great evil with very little information (by today's standards) - http://jacquesmattheij.com/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide

awakeasleep2• 10 years ago

The author is on the right track talking about how the Amsterdam census was used by the Nazis to track down Jewish people. But it's just a passing reference in a blog post about why "nothing to hide" is a bad idea.

My point is, an authoratative reference listing all the available historical examples could be an important educational tool as policymakers and the public try and decide how our society should treat data.

PeterPat• 10 years ago

Edward Snowden has documented extensively what is NSA is doing with big data, same goes for British intelligence. But it always them(Russians, bad asians, stazi) but not us (democratic Americans, westerners etc etc). You get my point eh?

waterhouse3• 10 years ago

At least the NSA hasn't used the data to conduct large-scale campaigns of imprisonment and murder (so far). In an investigation of the sort the GP describes, it would make sense to start with the worst abuses of the data; though less-bad abuses should also be included.

speeder2• 10 years ago

Yesterday I had an argument on Quora... someone mentioned something about the Nazi being the ultimate evil country or something, and another guy complained that people think US is evil.

Another post then said it was a "PR" problem... this made me take offense (since I am from one country where US did deliberate evil actions, and I know people personally affected), and I decided to past a list of stuff US did (Condor, Gladio, MKUltra, a list of dictators, and so on... it was about 30 things).

One guy then replied that it was "legitimate war acts", after more arguing, I found out that US people think that when Nazi are evil, they are evil, but when US do evil stuff, sometimes even more evil than the Nazi, it is "legitimate war acts".

Seemly people honestly believe that the US government can do no wrong, and that whatever it do had a good reason.

paulwitte253• 10 years ago

I do believe that big data analysis could benefit your company a great deal: http://www.sas.com/en_us/insights/articles/big-data/big-data...

lumberjack• 10 years ago

As always in these articles governments are the threat and private entities are just a footnote.

In reality things happened a bit differently. Private entities figured out the potential in exploiting user data and they started collecting it. When they refined the process well enough that it became valuable, governments saw the value in that data and requested access to it.

Do not underestimate the economic incentive of private entities to collect user data.

_nedR• 10 years ago

Just the other day i found 2 useful apps on the android play-store :

One was a Personal finance tracker and manager, that claimed to provide useful insights with minimal input. I ended up thinking that they would harvest my data to sell to credit-rating agencies and I decided not to install it.

Another app would analyze my call records, including duration, costs (by reading SMS,) - basically my complete messaging and communicating behaviour, and it would suggest plans and providers that would be the most cost-effective for me. Again i ended up turning down.

Everyday, I end up turning down these requests. It doesn't help that the Android ecosystem is so eager to pimp out my personal info at every opportunity (the only reason i would prefer an Apple device). Most of my peers don't care in the least and just agree to every intrusion.

My experience in the startup ecosystem in India (which probably doesn't have the basic data privacy laws other countries might have) only serves to heighten my unease. Not too long ago we were in talks with people about developing an app for the healthcare space. We had trouble seeing how the app could bring much value to the end-users, but they didn't seem to care much about that side of things. The impression I walked away with was that they were looking for any excuse to harvest health-related info to sell to insurance companies.

People are calling data the new oil. And we are living in the new oil rush. All startups (and also companies like Facebook and Google) talk about how their mission is to make the world a better place, but really we are all ultimately contributing to an Orwellian future, where every action we take is captured, stored, analysed and used to control, manipulate, and exploit us.

SeanDav• 10 years ago

Imagine the pain a modern day McCarthy, with Government sanctioned access to your data, could cause. Your lifestyle choices and everything you have ever read, posted or even been associated with, could be used to decide if you were a "threat" to 1 person in power's ideals and have you black listed, socially ostracised or even far worse.

Sobering thought for all those people that say "I have nothing to hide"

Agustus• 10 years ago

Absolutely, imagine that you are applying for a government contract or position and that you are vehemently against (pick a topic) and have made a few comments on Hacker News about how bad this politician is. The politician pops up that you are minus on supporting them, maybe you do not get priority on the contract.

Lawtonfogle2• 10 years ago

and have you black listed, socially ostracised or even far worse.

Say by giving you a virus that begins to download certain photos in a pattern to make it look like a person doing such. Photos that would, when discovered, destroy any and all credibility to the point that even if you proved in a court of law that they got there by means of a virus, your social reputation is still dead.

The dark side of big data

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