Targeting Big Data Ethics

As this year’s RSA conference gets ready to wrap up on the day Google begins to implement a new privacy policy, it’s important to remember the ethical significance of big data.

Analytics have shown how big data can help governments fight terrorism, training systems to crawl through countless documents and build context-based analysis. Other examples include using cell-phone data to quickly track drought and disease in impoverished communities. There are many scenarios where big data and analytics have shown the ability to add to the overall health of a society.

However, there seems to be a moral hazard with some of the companies engaging in big data collection. A CNET article delved into a few, less than savory examples of data aggregation. Reports of contact lists being uploaded from smartphones, Twitter selling billions of archived tweets to a data broker and Google circumventing browser security to pull data are becoming commonplace (all of those stories happened in the month of February). In every example, user data is being taken without explicit permission, which damages their trust once news gets out. ; ;

Beyond the voluntary sale of user data, there are examples of companies who failed to properly secure the data they collected themselves. Last year, Sony had to shut down their PlayStation network for nearly a month following a massive intrusion. ; Data from the 77 million-user network was compromised, including names, email addresses, home addresses, security answers and more.

The only encrypted user information was credit card data. In the aftermath, the company estimated the three-week outage cost them approximately $171.1 million. Sony’s story is not unique. A number of high-profile sites have been dealt blows by hacker groups, including Foxconn, the CIA, the FBI, and the Boston and Oakland Police departments.

The situation sometimes feels like a shady community where locks are for show, since everyone but the user owns a lock pick. ; The CNET article quotes Bruce Schneier, chief security officer at British Telecom as saying “Threats to Internet freedom, privacy, and openness don’t come from the bad guys [criminalhackers],” he said, they originate from the “entire marketing ecosystem.” Suggesting that the financial incentive driving big data is leading to the end of privacy.

Given recent buzz about surrounding the latest data and privacy intrusions and some members of congress calling for FTC investigations of Google regarding data practices. There may an introduction of legislation on the horizon requiring some basic, agreed upon data principles that could help regain the confidence of users.