"Reality Mining" Resets the Privacy Debate

An anonymous reader sends us to the NYTimes for a sobering look at the frontiers of "collective intelligence," also called in the article "reality mining." These techniques go several steps beyond the pedestrian version of "data mining" with which the Pentagon and/or DHS have been flirting. The article profiles projects at MIT, UCLA, Google, and elsewhere in networked sensor research and other forms of collective intelligence. "About 100 students at MIT agreed to completely give away their privacy to get a free smartphone. 'Now, when he dials another student, researchers know. When he sends an e-mail or text message, they also know. When he listens to music, they know the song. Every moment he has his Windows Mobile smartphone with him, they know where he is, and who's nearby.' ... Indeed, some collective-intelligence researchers argue that strong concerns about privacy rights are a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. ... 'For most of human history, people have lived in small tribes where everything they did was known by everyone they knew,' Dr. Malone said. 'In some sense we're becoming a global village. Privacy may turn out to have become an anomaly.'"

Comments

Here's the actual data logged. Play Big Brother

[Animats]

You can download the entire data set, which has had some data removed.

It's mostly cellular phone transactions. Your cellphone provider and NSA already have this data.

Re:privacy not an anomaly

[Anonymous Coward]

Agriculture was discovered about 10,000 years ago. That is a generous estimate.

Human history is about 300,000 generations.

Most of that time was spent in foraging communities, much like the other modern apes of today. Some of it was spent as nomadic hunter gatherers, especially in the age of stone weapons.

Re:About privacy

[D_Blackthorne]

My point was that you are making up a crazy law..

Really? Is it a crazy law? Go do a Google search for "sex acts illegal in Virginia", and see what you come up with! Here, let me save you the trouble for the first Google hit:

• Places where oral sex is illegal: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia and Washington D.C.
• An erection that shows through a man's clothing is illegal in: Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington D.C. and Wisconsin.
• In Georgia those charged and convicted for either oral or anal sex can be sentenced to no less than one year and no more than 20 years imprisonment.

And that's just the beginning. Read this for more, and then try to tell me it's a "crazy law" since these are laws in the United States.