Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart is getting concerned about political marketing. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s mass email to gays and lesbians is just the tip of the iceberg. The Conservatives, Liberals and NDP are all building big databases that are full of Canadians’ personal information. Unlike governments and businesses, however, political parties are exempt from our privacy laws. As a result, Stoddart has no control over how they use the information. Is it time to bring parties under the privacy laws?
While most people would probably say yes, I’m leaning strongly to no. Not because I want to see more political marketing. I don’t. Rather, the information landscape is in the midst of a seismic change that could make these laws obsolete within a decade. If so, the real challenge is not to extend them, but to rethink them — while we still have time. Let me explain.
As Susan Delacourt notes, the key issue raised by the Kenney case is data mining. This is when information from different sources is combined to produce new information. For example, a list of Liberal Party members could be combined with information about people’s income levels and marital status to identify Liberals who are wealthy and single. The Party could then target this group with a personalized fund-raising campaign.
Personal information, such as a name or address, provides the crucial reference point for linking data from different sources. So bringing political parties under our privacy laws ought to constrain data mining by limiting how and when they could use personal information, right?
Well, not quite. Personal information is only one reference point for data mining. Location-based information provides another. This kind of information tells us about the environment around someone, ranging from the furniture in their home to the menus in the restaurants they frequent. If enough of this information is available, we can learn a huge amount about the person without even using their personal information.
So far, this hasn’t been an issue because location-based information has been too scarce, too scattered or too general to support good data mining. (Addresses are the exception but, because they locate someone precisely, they have been treated as part of our personal information and protected.) That is all changing. An explosion of new “smart” devices means location-based information is coming online at a mind-boggling rate.
For example, Computerworld reports that nearly all of the 100 million smartphones now in use in the U.S. allow their owners to tell their friends where they are, what businesses they frequent and how those businesses perform.
Social marketing tools, such as Twitter, Foursquare, Google Maps, Facebook and Yelp, either are location-based services or are incorporating them, from personalized maps to consumer reports on businesses.
In the public sphere, governments around the world are developing systems that can collect, integrate and deliver huge amounts of location-based information, such as the demographic profile of a region or high resolution satellite photos of a neighborhood.
Finally, the really big game-changer is machine-to-machine communication. As Rudolf Van der Berg writes, electronic devices such as sensors are transforming how inanimate objects function. Over the next decade, light bulbs, cars, TVs, digital cameras, refrigerators, stereos, cranes and beds will all be connected through the Internet, creating a vast, global system of constantly flowing, location-based information.
The trend, says Van der Berg, is clear: Internet-connected TVs, eBook readers with a Wi-Fi or 3G connection, and smart electricity meters are just the beginning. In the U.S., location-based services are already a $75 billion industry that employs 500,000 people. This is growing exponentially. By 2020 some 50 billion devices around the planet will be plugged into the system and churning out information about their locations. The scope and scale is truly overwhelming. Indeed, much of the expert community now simply treats this as the dawn of a whole new internet era, the so-called Internet of Things.
The implications for personal privacy are profound. Our homes, cars, offices, neighborhoods and cities are subsystems within the emerging global system. They already contain huge amounts of information about what is going on in our personal space. The takeout food I order, the repairs I have done to my car, the taxis I call, the movies I download, the information on my smart meter, whether my lights are on or off —all are part of my location-based footprint.
As this information becomes superabundant, it will be possible — even easy — to learn all about people without even using their personal information. Analysts only need to look for activity-patterns in the pools of location-based information, such as the number of pizzas that have been ordered or taxi rides that have been taken. As these patterns are linked, a profile of the person(s) within the space emerges.
Our privacy laws were designed for a simpler world. They protect us from abuse by drawing a line between personal information and non-personal information and giving us control over how our personal information is used. In the emerging world of Big Location-Based Data, however, such control is starting to look like a pretty flimsy defense.
Still, let me say that I fully support the growth of location-based information. As a recent study by the British government concludes, it promises to greatly improve planning and decision-making among governments, businesses and citizens, change how public and private services are delivered, and supercharge productivity. I agree.
But the adjustment won’t be easy. In particular, the Internet of Things threatens to overwhelm our privacy laws. As a result, campaigning to bring political parties under them seems more like a distraction from the real issue than a way to enhance privacy protection. Instead, we should focus our energies on a full assessment of the impact of Big Data on privacy; and on identifying the steps needed to redefine our basic approach to protecting it.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Don Lenihan
While most people would probably say yes, I’m leaning strongly to no. Not because I want to see more political marketing. I don’t. Rather, the information landscape is in the midst of a seismic change that could make these laws obsolete within a decade. If so, the real challenge is not to extend them, but to rethink them — while we still have time. Let me explain.
As Susan Delacourt notes, the key issue raised by the Kenney case is data mining. This is when information from different sources is combined to produce new information. For example, a list of Liberal Party members could be combined with information about people’s income levels and marital status to identify Liberals who are wealthy and single. The Party could then target this group with a personalized fund-raising campaign.
Personal information, such as a name or address, provides the crucial reference point for linking data from different sources. So bringing political parties under our privacy laws ought to constrain data mining by limiting how and when they could use personal information, right?
Well, not quite. Personal information is only one reference point for data mining. Location-based information provides another. This kind of information tells us about the environment around someone, ranging from the furniture in their home to the menus in the restaurants they frequent. If enough of this information is available, we can learn a huge amount about the person without even using their personal information.
So far, this hasn’t been an issue because location-based information has been too scarce, too scattered or too general to support good data mining. (Addresses are the exception but, because they locate someone precisely, they have been treated as part of our personal information and protected.) That is all changing. An explosion of new “smart” devices means location-based information is coming online at a mind-boggling rate.
For example, Computerworld reports that nearly all of the 100 million smartphones now in use in the U.S. allow their owners to tell their friends where they are, what businesses they frequent and how those businesses perform.
Social marketing tools, such as Twitter, Foursquare, Google Maps, Facebook and Yelp, either are location-based services or are incorporating them, from personalized maps to consumer reports on businesses.
In the public sphere, governments around the world are developing systems that can collect, integrate and deliver huge amounts of location-based information, such as the demographic profile of a region or high resolution satellite photos of a neighborhood.
Finally, the really big game-changer is machine-to-machine communication. As Rudolf Van der Berg writes, electronic devices such as sensors are transforming how inanimate objects function. Over the next decade, light bulbs, cars, TVs, digital cameras, refrigerators, stereos, cranes and beds will all be connected through the Internet, creating a vast, global system of constantly flowing, location-based information.
The trend, says Van der Berg, is clear: Internet-connected TVs, eBook readers with a Wi-Fi or 3G connection, and smart electricity meters are just the beginning. In the U.S., location-based services are already a $75 billion industry that employs 500,000 people. This is growing exponentially. By 2020 some 50 billion devices around the planet will be plugged into the system and churning out information about their locations. The scope and scale is truly overwhelming. Indeed, much of the expert community now simply treats this as the dawn of a whole new internet era, the so-called Internet of Things.
The implications for personal privacy are profound. Our homes, cars, offices, neighborhoods and cities are subsystems within the emerging global system. They already contain huge amounts of information about what is going on in our personal space. The takeout food I order, the repairs I have done to my car, the taxis I call, the movies I download, the information on my smart meter, whether my lights are on or off —all are part of my location-based footprint.
As this information becomes superabundant, it will be possible — even easy — to learn all about people without even using their personal information. Analysts only need to look for activity-patterns in the pools of location-based information, such as the number of pizzas that have been ordered or taxi rides that have been taken. As these patterns are linked, a profile of the person(s) within the space emerges.
Our privacy laws were designed for a simpler world. They protect us from abuse by drawing a line between personal information and non-personal information and giving us control over how our personal information is used. In the emerging world of Big Location-Based Data, however, such control is starting to look like a pretty flimsy defense.
Still, let me say that I fully support the growth of location-based information. As a recent study by the British government concludes, it promises to greatly improve planning and decision-making among governments, businesses and citizens, change how public and private services are delivered, and supercharge productivity. I agree.
But the adjustment won’t be easy. In particular, the Internet of Things threatens to overwhelm our privacy laws. As a result, campaigning to bring political parties under them seems more like a distraction from the real issue than a way to enhance privacy protection. Instead, we should focus our energies on a full assessment of the impact of Big Data on privacy; and on identifying the steps needed to redefine our basic approach to protecting it.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Don Lenihan
No comments:
Post a Comment