Privacy and Big Data
By Terence Craig and Mary E. Ludloff
(O’Reilly Media, $19.99, paperback; $16.99, Kindle)
Worried about the safety of your personal data?
That genie, unfortunately is long out of the bottle—and very likely spread all over the planet now.
In Privacy and Big Data, authors Terence Craig and Mary E. Ludloff provide an eye-opening examination of “how the digital footprints we leave in our daily lives can be easily mashed up and, through expertise and technology, deliver startling accurate pictures of our behavior as well as increasingly accurate predictions of our future actions.”
Those digital pictures of who we are, who we vote for, what we buy and where we go can be worth a great deal of money and/or power to those who collect them. Indeed, they constitute “big data” and can be worth much more than gold, Craig and Ludloff contend.
“Far more is known today about us as individuals than ever before. How organizations, businesses, and government agencies use this information to track and predict our behavior is becoming one of the fundamental issues of the 21st century,” they state.
Privacy and Big Data is not a lengthy book, just 106 pages. Yet it packs plenty of punch in the form of useful, unsettling and sometimes surprising information, as well as thought-provoking examples, discussions and questions. The two writers – “executives from a growing startup in the big data and analytics industry” – draw upon extensive experience “deal[ing] with the issues of privacy every day as we support industries like financial services, retail, health care, and social media.”
Their well-written work is organized into five chapters and an appendix. Each chapter, meanwhile, has its own bibliography with links to additional materials and information.
Chapter 1, “The Perfect Storm,” looks at what has happened to privacy in the digital age and how we got to this point, starting with ARPANET (the “(Advanced Research Projects Agency Network”) in 1969, which later gave rise to the Internet. In the authors’ view: “There is a perfect storm brewing; a storm fueled by innovations that have altered how we talk and communicate with each other. Who could have predicted 20 years ago that the Internet would have an all-encompassing effect on our lives? Outside of sleeping, we are connected to the Web 24/7, using our laptops, phones, or iPads to check our email, read our favorite blogs, look for restaurants and jobs, read our friends’ Facebook walls, buy books, transfer money, get directions, tweet and foursquare our locations, and organize protests against dictatorships from anywhere in the world. Welcome to the digital age.”
Chapter 2, “The Right to Privacy in the Digital Age,” focuses on “what privacy encompasses, how our privacy norms have been shaped in the U.S. and abroad, the tension between privacy and other freedoms (or lack thereof), and how, for those of us who fully participate in all the digital age has to offer, it may very well be the end of privacy as we know it.”
Chapter 3, “The Regulators,” explores how the world has many geographical boundaries, from national borders down to city limits and even smaller demarcations, including individual agencies, departments and committees. Businesses large and small also operate within specific structural boundaries. Yet the Internet, the authors point out, recognizes no such limits. they examine “how…countries regulate the collection, use, and protection of their citizen’s personal information,” amid countless competing governmental and business agendas.
In Chapter 4, “The Players,” the authors warn: “Wherever you go, whatever you do, anywhere in this world, some ‘thing’ is tracking you. Your laptop, and other personal devices, like an iPad, Smartphone, or Blackberry, all play a role, and contribute to building a very detailed dossier of your likes, concerns, preferred airlines, favorite vacation spots, how much money you spend, political affiliations, who you’re friends with, the magazines you subscribe to, the make and model of the car you drive, the kinds of foods you buy, the list goes on.” The writers identify four broad categories of data grabbers and note that “while the[se] players are playing, consumer privacy continues to erode.” They discuss some specific things you can do to try to reduce your exposure. But, they caution, “What happens on the Internet stays on the Internet forever.”
Finally, in Chapter 5, “Making Sense of It All,” the authors pose several challenging questions and offer their views on possible answers. The questions include: “In the digital world we now inhabit, is privacy outmoded or even possible? Should we just get over it and move on? Should we embrace transparency and its many benefits and disadvantages? And if we do, or have it forced upon us, can we expect the same from our governments, our corporations, and powerful individuals? Will they be held to the same standard? If not, since information is power, what will our world look like?”
Two writers seldom agree on everything, and that is true in this book. In their Appendix titled “Afterword,” Craig and Ludloff state that they have tried to present a wide range of views on important questions, yet sometimes differ in their personal views regarding privacy and big data. They offer brief summaries of where they came from and how their viewpoints have been shaped by life events.
In a world where computers, phones, cars, cameras and many other household, work and public devices gather, store and disseminate data about us, this book can help readers think harder about what information — and freedoms — we may be giving up, willingly and unwittingly, in the name of convenience and connectivity.
– Si Dunn
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