5 ms·

The dark side of big data

115 points by guy-brush 11y ago

awakeasleep 11y 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 11y 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 http://jacquesmattheij.com/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide
  - awakeasleep 11y 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.
    - mindcrime 11y ago
      Agreed. If somebody starts to writes this book, put me down for a few copies on "pre-order" now.
- PeterPat 11y 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?
  - waterhouse 11y 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.
    - pdkl95 11y ago
      > 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)
      - wodenokoto 11y ago
        How is the right to assembly practically limited?
        waterhouse 11y ago
        "COINTELPRO-style" appears to mean for FBI/NSA agents to ""expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, neutralize or otherwise eliminate" the activities of these movements and their leaders." The obvious use-case that comes to mind would be for a leader of a politically inconvenient movement (ideally in the early stages) to have embarrassing, ideally career-ending or even jail-time-giving secrets exposed, to stop them from posing any further threat. "Parallel construction" would be orchestrating a scenario in which the secret gets revealed in a way that isn't obviously the work of the FBI. Let's say... arranging for a suspicious item of clothing belonging to a secret lover to be "accidentally" left behind for the spouse to find; staging some kind of mundane theft, getting the local police to get a warrant and search the target's residence and discover his recreational drug collection; perhaps even trumping up a crime entirely (ideally something like rape or possession of child pornography, the scandal of which would probably ruin the target's effectiveness as a leader even if a court acquits them sometime later). Exercise your imagination. If the above ideas are stupid and outlandish, well, I thought of them while writing this post; a large agency that systematizes the approach and applies it routinely could probably do much better. Harassment of any sort is probably useful in reducing a target's effectiveness; perhaps they first send disruptive internet commenters, then do more advanced things only if the target is still a threat. The question is, how much do they actually do, and what effect do they have? The JTRIG Wiki article gives some examples; I think I'd have to read more to evaluate their effectiveness.
paulwitte253 11y 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-analytics-for-you.html http://www.sas.com/en_us/insights/articles/big-data/big-data...
lumberjack 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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.
- Lawtonfogle 11y 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.

115 points by guy-brush 11y 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 11y 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 http://jacquesmattheij.com/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide
- awakeasleep 11y 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.
  - mindcrime 11y ago
    Agreed. If somebody starts to writes this book, put me down for a few copies on "pre-order" now.
PeterPat 11y 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?
- waterhouse 11y 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.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    > 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)
    - wodenokoto 11y ago
      How is the right to assembly practically limited?
      - waterhouse 11y ago
        "COINTELPRO-style" appears to mean for FBI/NSA agents to ""expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, neutralize or otherwise eliminate" the activities of these movements and their leaders." The obvious use-case that comes to mind would be for a leader of a politically inconvenient movement (ideally in the early stages) to have embarrassing, ideally career-ending or even jail-time-giving secrets exposed, to stop them from posing any further threat. "Parallel construction" would be orchestrating a scenario in which the secret gets revealed in a way that isn't obviously the work of the FBI. Let's say... arranging for a suspicious item of clothing belonging to a secret lover to be "accidentally" left behind for the spouse to find; staging some kind of mundane theft, getting the local police to get a warrant and search the target's residence and discover his recreational drug collection; perhaps even trumping up a crime entirely (ideally something like rape or possession of child pornography, the scandal of which would probably ruin the target's effectiveness as a leader even if a court acquits them sometime later). Exercise your imagination. If the above ideas are stupid and outlandish, well, I thought of them while writing this post; a large agency that systematizes the approach and applies it routinely could probably do much better. Harassment of any sort is probably useful in reducing a target's effectiveness; perhaps they first send disruptive internet commenters, then do more advanced things only if the target is still a threat. The question is, how much do they actually do, and what effect do they have? The JTRIG Wiki article gives some examples; I think I'd have to read more to evaluate their effectiveness.

paulwitte253 11y 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-analytics-for-you.html http://www.sas.com/en_us/insights/articles/big-data/big-data...

lumberjack 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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.
Lawtonfogle 11y 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.