Mission Creep: How the Big Data revolution will challenge democratic privileges
Not many people know that modern computing was born out of a growing need to efficiently count an ever expanding population. With the primary motive being the need to determine how taxes could be levied on civil society, the census was first carried during the formation of the Roman empire. The urgency for population counting was especially relevant when resources were particularly low. Sweden’s shift to census building came at a time when the country had just lost a bloody war, fought over 20 years against its Scandinavian and Russian neighbours. Later forms of census building became a US preoccupation. But as populations and geographical boundaries grew, demographic information took so long to count and collate that by the time it was finished, it would almost certainly be out of date.
It was not until the 1900s that mechanical processes was used to begin to automate the count. Using a technology borrowed from British cotton looms to tally responses based on which holes were ‘punched out’ in a multiple choice card based questionnaire, the data collection process could be sped up, and the first computer program was effectively created. A few years later Information Business Machines, or IBM as it later became known, was founded out of a conglomeration of private companies who existed in order to gather such results.
Fast forward to modern day, and the impact of automated data collection, together with analytic computer techniques is helping to make real progress to solve some of the world’s most profound concerns. Scientists at the University of Southern California have created an easy to use and cheap to distribute laser sensor to capture different types of information about approximately 1000 species of mosquitos which carry the deadly malaria bug, out of the millions in existence which do not.
In a multi-dimensional universe of information, Big Data is here to stay. With such information overload, connected devices — the so-called age of the Internet of Things (IoT) — becomes an important conduit towards rationalising our behaviour. And advances in neuroscience has highlighted the increasingly radical potential for how data may influence how we will be thinking in the future.
Take the curious case of Hybrid Thinking. According to American inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, our brains have around 300 million ‘computing modules’, which are organised into a hierarchy of thought. On the lowest end modules are dedicated to recognising certain shapes — the cross bar of a capital A for example. On the next level up are dedicated to understand that A is the first letter of the word Apple. On the highest levels modules are programmed to recognise such abstract concepts as humour and irony, and so on. Within 20 years Kurzweil predicts we will be able to implant a chip within the brain so we can wirelessly upload and download data as ‘memories’ from a cloud. Our 300 million modules will be temporarily increased to say, 1 billion modules, as easily as it is to connect to a WIFI router.
In a connected world, it stands to reason that our deepest private thoughts and drives will have the potential to be laid bare to prying eyes. Remarkably, the technology already exists to read our basic brain wave patterns and infer our actual thought. Electroencephalogram (EEG) machines, which measure the electrical activity of the brain from an array of electrodes on the scalp, can tell what parts of the brain recognise the letter A in real time. In China, factory workers are being fitted with these monitors to determine productivity, emotional states and even propensity towards subversive thought.
Data Privacy
The Big Data movement relies on the flow of information, consented or otherwise. Such an exchange is not controversial when monitoring mosquitos in sub-Saharan Africa, but data is often very personal by nature. Using legal means, corporations are already creating techniques to find out about us and analyse us from afar. Credit agencies are using our browsing history to decide on our rating. Insurance companies are working out our premiums by buying our fitness app data. The Cambridge Analytica scandal has proven that our personal digital footprint is being captured, stored and manipulated for nefarious means too. Through increasingly complex algorithms driven by the data we have provided either intentionally or not, companies will also soon be able to infer private data about you.
The loss of our data privacy is the first step on the slippery slope towards the loosening of our autonomy as thinking beings — the domino which only needs to be flicked in order to set in motion a whole trail of digital happenstance, fraying the edges of our democratic freedoms. Those who control your data, supposedly control you.
The natural, uncomfortable conclusion of brain transparency and a loss of privacy is that our behaviours and personality can be manipulated. If that conspiratorial position seems too far-fetched, and better left to the musings of a science fiction novelist, think again about the way organisations are handling our data in the present day. One concern is encapsulated in an example cited in the popular Big Data: Does Size Matterby Thomas Harkness, who writes “Imagine that, wandering down the real High Street, you left a visible trace that showed not only which shop windows you looked into, but also how long you stayed and what you looked at. Imagine your conversations, not only with shop assistants, but even with your companions, were recorded and played back by somebody picking key words such as ‘shoes’, ‘expensive’ or ‘wedding’. Now imagine that the shop assistants are SO keen to sell to you that they rearrange their window displays before you pass. They’ve fed all this information into a computer, which predicts what’s most likely to appeal to you and how much you’re likely to pay for it. That is in effect what’s happening when you shop online”.
The stakes are perhaps highest when considering our fundamental human rights. Until 2016, when a Norwegian consumer rights agency successfully challenged them, users who signed up to the Tinder App were effectively agreeing that their full history, profile and photos would become the property of the dating company, in perpetuity, to be used for any purpose, in any format. In a Big Data-base world, the same authorities meant to protect us have developed technologies to overlay a wide range of this information to both track us on an individual level as well as predict group behaviours. For instance, Harness’ book references the potential misuse of Oakland Police Department’s SpotShotter audio technology, which has the ability to record people’s voices whenever a particular recording device passes them, as well as pick up on suspected gunshots. Oakland police are also one of a number of US police forces to use the controversial Stingray system, a highly effective system for triangulating an individual’s location based on the serial number of their mobile (whether it is switched on or off) and the interception of calls and messages. The private companies behind these innovations are now planning to increase revenues by reselling data generated to other government agencies. Even if such innovations are deemed to be effective, police chiefs must beware of what they wish for. If Oakland was to use technology to predict criminality, how far would the inevitable increase in racial profiling — focusing on geographic or demographic specifics — lead to the further polarisation of communities and ensuing increase in rates of crime?
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Technology for good, for social change, has the potential to be lost in the name of progress. As Douglas Rushkoff says in Team Human, ‘we have to stop using technology to optimise human beings for the market and start optimising technology for the human future’. Human choices, preferences and habits are becoming processed in the name of automated, thought-free consumerism and our value is determined by how much data we can provide. Freedom of movement and expression is being compromised in the name of our own security, but the rules of engagement are far from clear.
If nothing else, the Cambridge Analytica scandal has awoken the public consciousness to protection of privacy, and Facebook have slowly begun to take the problem seriously too. GDPR is certainly a step in the right direction in focusing minds on the importance of data protection and security, but Europe is still someway off a single ‘digital market’ with clearly defined boundaries.The answer inevitably begins at home. There are simple things we can all do — from protecting what information we post on social media profiles to being choosy about which organisation you share your personal details with online. On a wider level, taking affirmative action can work too. In 2014, community organisers in Oakland successfully campaigned to stop the city council implementing the Domain Awareness Center (DAC), a mass-surveillance system that would funnel data from public and private sensors and camera feeds — including audio from ShotSpotter — into one central information repository.
Ultimately, we are standing at a precipice. The advancement of technology has been so rapid that we are close to irreparably heating the planet as a result of industrialised production. Bureaucratic norms and reforms have been left woefully in the distance. As a result, in a society becoming increasingly homogenised, the loss of critical thinking and privacy has evoked Orwellian concerns.
Keeping checks and balances on how we use the opportunities presented to us should surely be the fundamental concern for lawmakers globally. But in the battle of big business interests and political centralisation versus the individual, the tide is shifting ominously. A new law going through EU parliament, The Directive on Copyright, would ask every website owner from Youtube to your local food blogger to add an artificial intelligence filter which scans content being uploaded to its platform, severely jeopardising freedom online to criticise, link, share and debate. Strong opposition has been tabled by people such as Sir Tim Berners Lee, but two thirds of the EU parliament are in support of a bill which will be voted on and is due to be enshrined into law later this year.
Meanwhile, researchers at USC are preparing to launch the next generation of its laser detector to improve on ruggedness and accuracy. With malaria having infected 216 million of the world’s population in 2016 their work cannot be delivered quickly enough.
