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

~~~
PeterPat
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?

~~~
waterhouse
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.

~~~
pdkl95
> large-scale campaigns of imprisonment and murder

That's counterproductive, because it's very bad PR in the long run. The modern
way to abuse data is through "parallel construction", which allows for very
efficient COINTELPRO-style targeting of anyone that would bring people
together. There's a reason modern mass-surveillance technology is mapping
_relationships_.

Limiting our right to _assemble_ has been happening for a long time (remember
"free speech zones"?). Before any serious challenge to a power can happen, the
people involved first have to realize other like-minded people _exist_ , that
they don't have to challenge power _alone_.

(if anybody things this is implausible, I suggest re-reading the documents
about JTRIG)

~~~
waterhouse
> That's counterproductive, because it's very bad PR in the long run.

You're saying that the government is still using the data to enforce political
domination, and the only reason they're not murdering people is that it's more
efficient and sustainable to use other tactics. That may be so. I'd regard it
as kind of orthogonal to the point I was making; nevertheless, let's see...

I would argue that the COINTELPRO approach is less bad than the gulag
approach, in a few ways. (a) Less damage is inflicted on individuals' lives.
(b) It seems chancy; there will be some "politically inconvenient" leaders who
just happen to be squeaky clean, and maybe all available methods of
discrediting them would look highly suspicious and reveal the FBI's hand, and
they just have to let it through. (c) One aspect of the approach is that the
fact that anything is happening is hidden from the general public. This
necessarily means that (most) people are not being intimidated away from the
politically undesirable view; whereas with purges, people learn to shut up for
fear of their _lives_. If some ideas or arguments are intrinsically appealing
to the people, it seems they will spread inevitably, even if public proponents
of them mysteriously keep ending their careers in scandal; and eventually
there will be enough proponents that the FBI can't take them all down.

It feels like there are fundamental limits to this kind of repression; it's
less scary and final than the domination backed by purges. The NSA do have a
scary amount of power, probably more than any branch of government--e.g. they
could probably decide the presidential election by revealing some choice
secrets and discrediting the undesired candidates--but it seems limited. If
they use it too much, they'll lose it, which they don't want and will act to
avoid.

I am interested in knowing about what they get up to--and part of my
assumption is that the NSA's operations are limited by their need to maintain
a mostly-plausible public pretense of no significant political manipulation of
their own country, lest a public backlash destroy them; which requires that
there be suspicious and watchful citizens like you, ready to get angry at the
NSA.

I simply object to the notion that there is no significant difference between
the FBI's operations and killing hundreds of thousands of political
undesirables. We _are_ better than that, and it is important that we remain
that way.

------
SeanDav
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"

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>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.

------
_nedR
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.

------
lumberjack
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.

------
paulwitte253
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...](http://www.sas.com/en_us/insights/articles/big-data/big-data-
analytics-for-you.html)

