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Don't Build a Database of Ruin
Hugh Pickens writes "Paul Ohm writes in Harvard Business Review that businesses today are building perfect digital dossiers of their customers, massive data stores containing thousands of facts about every member of our society. He says these databases will grow to connect every individual to at least one closely guarded secret. 'This might be a secret about a medical condition, family history, or personal preference. It is a secret that, if revealed, would cause more than embarrassment or shame; it would lead to serious, concrete, devastating harm,' writes Ohm. 'And these companies are combining their data stores, which will give rise to a single, massive database. I call this the Database of Ruin. Once we have created this database, it is unlikely we will ever be able to tear it apart.' Consider the most famous recent example of big data's utility in invading personal privacy: Target's analytics team can determine which shoppers are pregnant, and even predict their delivery dates, by detecting subtle shifts in purchasing habits. 'In the absence of intervention, soon companies will know things about us that we do not even know about ourselves. This is the exciting possibility of Big Data, but for privacy, it is a recipe for disaster.' According to Ohm, if we stick to our current path, the Database of Ruin will become an inevitable fixture of our future landscape, one that will be littered with lives ruined by the exploitation of data assembled for profit. The only way we avoid this is if companies learn to say, 'no' to some of the privacy-invading innovations they're pursuing. 'The lesson is plain: compete vigorously and beat your competitors in every legitimate way, except when it comes to privacy invasion. Too many companies have learned this lesson the hard way, launching invasive new services that have triggered class action lawsuits, Congressional inquiries, and media firestorms.'"
According to Ohm, if we stick to our current path, the Database of Ruin will become an inevitable fixture of our future landscape, one that will be littered with lives ruined by the exploitation of data assembled for profit.
No doubt, but what we need is a path forward that avoids the pitfalls of ubiquitous databases while retaining the benefits.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I, Anomalous Coward, I am involved in a sexual relationship with a goldfish.
Basically, if I can make up enough too-crazy-to-be-true BS and post it all over the internet, nobody will know how much I am attracted to giraffes.
DAMMIT.
Shouldn't that read "Too few companies have learned ..."? Otherwise the problem would not exist.
Anyway, I think this can only be fixed by legislation. Companies have too much monetary incentive for privacy violation to do anything else than token improvements. "Industry self-regulation" is nothing but newspeak for "foxes guarding the henhouse".
That's why everyone I know that's a diabetic gets a ton of calls from India call center scammers...
All the time here people are drivelling on about the "privacy violations" of shopping in a big chain store and paying for it with their credit card which lets the stores build up a picture of their buying habits.
I suppose these are also the same people I see wandering around the streets in stained clothing screaming "STOP LOOKING AT ME! STOP LOOKING AT ME!" to nobody that the rest of us can see.
He missed a vital element when writing 1984. Looking at the oppressive governments of the time and the rise of extensive government monitoring, it was easy to imagine governments of the future would be able to take it to an extreme. He completly failed to see the rising power and influence of commercial interests, motivated not by power but by money.
. . . than how come I am not interested in any of those products that Amazon tells me should interest me?
Maybe there is something wrong with me?
Maybe not conforming to their purchase expectations is a sign of criminal activity . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
So am I supposed to be afraid of a database linking facts known about me that reveals one fact that before was not tied to me?
Or am I supposed to fear a company guessing some fact about me and taking action on that guess?
It seems like from the pregnancy example that it's really the latter he is worried about. But I can't see what the solution to that fear really is, to not let companies guess something about you based on other data?
The best thing we could probably ever hope for is a centralized database of all information about us, that we could control what parts other companies can see... but in real life I do not think that workable, for one thing people would have no idea what was safe to release or not.
But also there are many of "us" as individuals. There is the "us" that comes from our IP addresses. There is the "us" that comes from our browsers. There is the "us" that comes from logins sharing the same email... so you'd almost have to have separate data identities to manage and monitor. Realistically no-one will do that.
In the end I just don't know how afraid I really am at big systems making algorithmic guesses about me that no human will see or know about outside of the resulting effects of that guess (like getting a Target ad with coupons for pregnancy items). Why?
If you look at the article that "guess" actually hurt Target more than the girl! Companies making guesses that can lead to kind of negative lasting impact this guy is talking about, are also in danger of really pissing off a lot of people (like Progressives automatic calculations of cost savings leading them to support defense of someone who killed a client). These guesses can lead to bad PR, so in the end companies will tend to throttle back the possible impact of any guesses derived from Big Data, out of simple self-interest (with the occasional hilarious counter-example bubbling up once in a while).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The intelligence services will be able to use this to screen for terrorists. If someone has different food-buying habits in Ramadan then buys suspicious chemicals or components then they should be checked. No more surprises when some "ordinary white guy" turns out to be a muzzie terrorist.
It's one of the biggest players building the Database of Ruin. Heck, it even might be it!
Pay in Cash, don't use store discount cards. Don't let "them" tie the purchase to you. Problem solved.
Or, take the discount, pay with your convenient credit card, and don't give a crap what they think they know about you.
Your choice.
Calling for commercial organisations to stop profiling their customers is about as worthwhile as asking a four year old not to eat that marshmallow you just placed in front of them.
The problem is Joe Average is just too willing to give up their information for the smallest of perks, be it filling out a personal survey to win an iProduct, or swiping their supermarket member card at every transaction to save a few percent.
They keep a database of people who actually read the OP.
zero rows so far.
A few successful big dollar lawsuits against these companies for stalking would be awesome.
Better still would officers of these companies going to jail for same.
yeah because you know, when cable tv showed up, it claimed zero ads on its premium non-movie channels.. now look at it.. tons of money and it's loaded with them.. You are purposely misconstruing the actions of advertisers.. if all they were doing was throwing up billboards, that's one thing.. active electronic surveillance of buying habits is COMPLETELY different.
I think of it more like this... a handful of organizations are aggregating everything there is to know about me. Between the sites I visit, the contents of my email and chats, my searches, my friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintences, what I buy or want to buy, things I read or watch, etc., maybe three companies have it all. Data storage is virtually free. Data collection mechanisms are simple and effective. Mountains of other data can be extrapolated from what they have, and these few companies are everywhere. And don't kid yourself that a browser plugin is hiding you effectively.
Now imagine those two or three datasources are compromised at some point, either by hack or by purchase. There's something in there that would make it impossible for a person like you or me to, say, be elected to a public office. I'm not even be sure what mine is, but there's something in there. Maybe it's me talking to someone on a dating site, or something I said via IM, or adding a certain book to a wishlist and forgetting about it, or watching some YouTube video.
Things are going to change at some point. We're either going to get a lot more liberal about what defines a person's character, or we're going to have to deal with data collection and security in a very different way. I don't know which, but either way it'll probably be a painful transition.
'Database of RUIN'?? Sounds like Paul Ohm is desperate to call first dibs on buzzwording the 'big data' phenomenon.
In any case, the potential nefarious uses of 'big data' are pretty clear. Since this is one of the greatest profit-making devices large corporations have discovered in recent years, it's hugely unlikely that ordinary people can 'stop' it via normal means.
Seems to me like personal cash purchases are the way to go wherever possible. But also (and I know, wrong place to say this) - is there not an argument to increase awareness amongst IT professionals about the impact of their undoubtedly excellent technical work in making all this happen?
Hej! Nasi tu byli!
People don't even care. And sadly actively participate in their own destruction.
no he wasn't. In his future, the difference between the state and the corporation was zero. We're damned close to that now where one passes the puck to the other to get over some legal or functional limitation the other isn't limited by. When it's done, the puck gets passed back.
I dunno, but that sounds kinda Canadian, eh?
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
What stops you from not having a membership card, and paying in cache ?
Sure, it's more convenient to let them spy on you, but if it bothers you - you don't have to let them.
They are not using biometrics to recognize customers yet... I think.
It's near impossible to buy something through a site with anything but a credit card.
Of human culture colliding with human technology. As long as we continue to honor our lowest primate drives, then the amplifying effect of technology will generate results with greater and greater negative impact. The good news, is that such circumstances would be unsustainable, precisely because they would be socially unacceptable. At some point human beings will communicate at the speed of thought through imbedded technology. Secrets will become passe even impossible. Humanity will have to evolve into a species that is capable with dealing in absolute truth, and it will not be a society any of us recognize today.
This takes place at a job interview.
recruiter: you download nasty porn daily
me: you downloaded full Justin B. discography last week ... interview back to normal
There are several systems with disposable single-use credit card numbers.
And please do tell me, how a shopping site can get sensitive personal information about you ? People normally buy some books, some gadgets, maybe some clothing online - not their main food, medicine, personal hygine, etc purchases which I imagine they make at the supermarket reasonably near their home.
This is the dumbest article I've ever read.
dangit dale i thought i told you to quit postin this stuff on thuh inter-net
It's now patently obvious that Ted Kaczynski was right.
cuz what you buy is nobodys damn business but yours
captcha: openly
If Facebook is anything to go by, Big Data = Big useless data.
Realistically, you have to look at a Wal-mart or a Bank of America or a Progressive and ask 'Are they really going to hold back on egregious privacy violations just because it's icky?'
The answer, of course, is hell no. As Corporate People they're rapacious sociopaths who'd happily burn puppies or African orphans to death for a few extra cents of shareholder value. There is no possible appeal to ethics here, the best you could do is appeal to possible corporate black eye that would outweigh the profit. Which I don't see.
And then of course there's Homeland Security with their Spy on Everyone Echelon type initiatives and fat pipes right from the heart of every telecom company.
Your Database of Ruin already exists somewhere(s). You've just got to assume it does and figure out how you deal with that.
I think we already seeing the initial phases of this. Non-totalitarian societies will adjust and normalize to be more accepting of digressions, and otherwise damaging historic and contemporaneous behavior which will be more transparent for more and more people. What seems like absurd levels of privacy violation today / yesterday, will be taken for granted in the future / present.
... But this is far from pre-determined, and these crude statistical models geared toward increased consumption of tomorrow; may in the near future give way to more holistic pictures of who we are with the disposal of much more computational resources and vastly more connected data about our increasing transparent existence. Independently of a slide towards totalitarianism; these databases and cognitive pattern recognition systems; could just as well support connections and social bridging of a cornucopia of personal identities; histories with digressions; and everything in between. If we expand access to build these system with human values we wish to amplify; it could just as well increase "freedom" "autonomy" and sustainable"well being" among the techo-societies participants.
To the extent of increased personal hardship from these databases; in non-totalitarian societies its unlikely to result in significant transition towards worse ( or better ) treatment of people outside social and political norms. People outside social norms have been "abused" in small circles for ages; in a larger more "anonymous" society the abuse is built into other layers of the social fabric ( id cards; state oppression etc ); Not to say all circles are created equal; but techno-deterministic dystopianism is a false premise. Technological social changes are bound to the societies in which they take place.
Within "our" global "democratic" "free market" capitalism context the macro implications of concentrated power being able to better micro manage public opinion with powerful tools for life pattern recognition models; may be more problematic then direct loss of privacy abuses that the article outlines. That is to say; all our search for "personal" connections with others may be easier to be mediated. i.e an online video chat "hang out" support group which is moderated by an inquisitive supportive digital agent. That in addition to connecting us to exactly who we needed to talk to and giving us heart felt sense of well being in the short term; is simultaneously creating voids in meaningful existence by commoditizing your values towards particular life style choices, entertaining distractions, and consumption habits that don't enable a sustainable social structure.
Where by every piece of information we look for and every social connection we make is mediated towards these "a-political" life style choices bounding political discourse and participation making it impossible to regulate such abuses enabling increasing concentration of power etc.; there-by creating a vicious cycle in which our autonomy is transformed even more dramatically then in the previous century of mass media consumption.
Whoever wrote this has never worked on real big data projects.
I work on big Data warehouse and business intelligence projects all the time.
We're lucky if people have data well enough organized to calculate sales by district by month.
And you're worried about people finding out thinks about you that even you don't know?
First of all, you can pay cash (or eMoney, many forms of which are essentially untraceable. I use Japan Rail's mobile Suica to pay for lots of small stuff. The card has a serial number, but it's not registered to a name...). I don't use loyalty cards when I buy things like condoms or medicine.
It's not particularly easy to connect different databases of different designs behind different firewalls either, even when you want to on purpose.
Also, I use amazon.co.jp, but I buy all KINDS of stuff. Stuff for my girlfriend, presents for my friends, stuff my boss asked me to get, etc. If they try to analyze that, what is it going to tell them about me? "He likes paper-clips, tampons, USB flash memory, and paper." Whoop di doo.
I actually will be really interested and entertained to know that their analysis reveals!
In fact, I propose a deal - I will let them do whatever analysis they want on my data, as long as they show me the results (like Google's Latitude Dashboard).
...in front of me that I'm likely to need, when I need it most, and when I'm most willing to buy it, doesn't mean I'll choose to buy it *from that vendor*.
Chances are I'll think, 'yes, I do need that! Thanks for the tip - I'll go somewhere else and get one.'
class action lawsuits, Congressional inquiries, and media firestorms
Oh my!
Unless this guy goes out and actually out competes everyone with the database of ruin, none of the above seems like a good enough incentive to prevent one from being created.
Which are already disappearing. Really? I have to explain the relevance of what I said to the topic? It concerns mass db merges over time to the point where it's basically one giant record of all purchases/recorded behaviors and the output of the heuristics that data was used with.
not their main food, medicine, personal hygine, etc purchases which I imagine they make at the supermarket reasonably near their home.
Err... you may have missed the move to online grocery shopping.
In the UK, over one-third of purchases from the big supermarkets are made online and delivered to the door. Actually, delivered into the kitchen.
For someone educated enough to write in Harvard Business Review, it amazes me how naive Paul Ohm must be to imply that companies saying 'no' is a realistic or even believable option. Anyone who believes that anything they do might make companies or governments take a moral stand is destined for disappointment. I wouldn't go as far as saying that they deserve to be exploited, because they don't, but anyone so naive is almost certainly going to end up so.
You are far more likely to be on the database of neglect or the database of annoyance long before the door to your closet gets opened. If you haven't learned to your lesson by being a victim of id theft or being a product you get what you deserve.
There are different levels of the word "public". You can look through my windows and see the interior. So that view is "public". Any burglar who wants to break in would have to come to my house and look inside to see if there is anything of value. If the same view is visible on Google Streetview, it is by far more public. Burglars can monitor thousands of addresses from their own home, without being seen themselves. This is why harvesting public data can be enormously evil.
The ability to pay anonymously is getting less and less by day. In Europe, it is not yet that bad that you are seen as a terrorist if you pay cash, but there are far too many places where you have to pay, but real money is not accepted. So you may think people are stupid if they pay with a credit card, but often there isn't even a choice.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
...will let us know all about the analysts, and their owners. Who drinks with the bigots, who is lying about their own lives. Who... is turning up to protest queer people being treated as humans... WHO is treating women as mere sex cattle as opposed to humans. They will know all about us... including what each of us knows about each of them.
It'll all end in stalemate. Either an open, privacy-free world, or a closed one, where the risk of disclosure is a valid concern
Even worse is when this "database of ruin" makes FALSE categorizations/predictions about an individual and then treats them as such. It already happens.
Welcome to the future- guilty without proof, guilty until proven innocent, guilty without due process, guilty by association, guilty without even knowing it.
Murray Leinster figured this out in 1946.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
instead of making better database analytics they will use this new found power to get laws passed that makes it criminal to not conform to their crappy results. Even if you opt out you will still be punished for nonconformity of quarterly outlook expectations.
I live in London. We have loads of convenience stores which employ no staff that speak English, and are more than happy to be paid in cash (Unlike previous posters, I have not found any that take cache). Many will take a random mix of Euros and pounds. I doubt they contribute to any databases, and if they do, it will be completely illegible and probably gibberish - like their tax returns.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
We should be able to get a copy and correct wrong information, just as with our credit reports.
Sounds like a good name for a nerdcore band.
read that as "Don't Build a Database of Porn"
Must be my eyes going bad, presumably from my database of porn.
Heaven forbid we find out that we ALL have an asshole, no matter what our social or economic status. Maybe once we realize that we all have an asshole, everyone will stop being so ashamed of theirs.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
he doesn't dwell on the large mistakes these analytics make.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The accumulation of all information about everybody and everything is unavoidable, so, society will evolve into one of two paths: either a paranoid dystopia where a secret elite controls everybody through fear, and all production of goods and services are controlled by the corporations, or it evolves into a society of free individuals who empowered by technology and social awareness become economically independent and free of the social pressures caused by obsolete ways of thinking. These new free people will join on a new form of government that peacefully will make the old one irrelevant. If you live in the USA you might think the paranoid dystopia is more likely, but if you see the youth in Europe, Latin America and Asia it'll be obvious that gradually a new free society is being built.
I can't help but believe that many individuals will set themselves up in business offering software, hardware, services and advice to people to help them confound the data-keepers.
Can't believe it's not already the plot of a hundred Sci-Fi novels
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
... presumably, this leaves us to deduce that in the database server room we would find the racks of ruin.
The only way we avoid this is if companies learn to say, 'no' to some of the privacy-invading innovations they're pursuing.
Asking a company to "learn" to stop profit-seeking is like asking a dog to "learn" to stop having sex.
It's not something they have the ability to "learn". It's something that must be imposed on them by a controlling authority.
Private companies are specifically designed to seek profit above all else. What part of "above all else" does Ohm not understand?
What stops you from not having a membership card, and paying in cache ?
I tried that once, I dug a hole behind the tree at the intersection, put my money in, and left a square rock on top to identify the place. But the seller claimed they never got it.
Right, because perpetual growth is not the Holy Graal of every capitalist corporation.
I can already hear the advertising executive: "We have enough money already, no need for more ads".
Its interesting to note just how inaccurate some of these databases are. I challenged a friend of mine in the private detective biz to do a background check on me. They have addresses for me that I've never lived at. They are missing some important information about me, including underestimating my net worth by a few orders of magnitude (something that should be important for targeted marketing IMO). They are also missing the identities of many of my business associates.
Its also interesting to note that most of the missing financial information on me involves with foreign investments. In countries who have much better laws concerning privacy protection. So the end result on lax data protection in the USA will be to drive private capital offshore.
Have gnu, will travel.
Between Facebook, Google and the NSA this database already exists.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Identity is clearly the focal point of this discussion. Do we admit the existence of polylithic identities, or do we insist that all of a single person's persona be linkable to their physical selves? The nymwars turned on this questions. I'd like to point out a comment by Jaron Lanier in the Q&A section of http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker:
"I'd like to hypothesize one civilizing force, which is the perception of multiple overlapping hierarchies of status. I've observed this to be helpful in work dealing with rehabilitating gang members in Oakland. When there are multiple overlapping hierarchies of status there is more of a chance of people not fighting their superior within the status chain. And the more severe the imposition of the single hierarchy in people's lives, the more likely they are to engage in conflict with one another. Part of America's success is the confusion factor of understanding how to assess somebody's status."
And I think this observation answers in the affirmative to the value of polylithic identity. Naturally, the above is anecdotal, and I am unaware of more rigorous studies, but statements to the effect of "...if you have nothing to hide" routinely spouted by generally privileged, non-minority, center-of-the-bell-curve folk grossly disregard the fact of the diversity of experience that people have (even themselves, if examined honestly).
Ohm's Database of Ruin spells the collapse of the carefully nurtured identities that people have created. This may certainly lead to violence and barbarism if Lanier's hypothesis holds, all in the name of profit, bureaucratic efficiency, and laziness.
Richard Eggers Fired From Wells Fargo For 'Stupid Stunt' He Committed Nearly 50 Years Ago:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/28/richard-eggers-wells-fargo_n_1836441.html
Don't ask me to stop just because technology makes fucking easier!
Not to spoil a good game, but Resonance is a sort of what if about how this could happen. http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/resonance.html I would say more but I don't want to ruin it. Everyone should play it if you like point and click adventure games.
January - bought condoms
February - bought condoms
March - bought pregnancy test
April - bought pickles and ice cream
Insurance companies already have this database.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Reminds me of this conversation from Deus Ex:
Three weeks ago at Target they auto-printed out coupons for jock itch medication and then the next week I get coupons for hemorrhoid medication. So I asked my wife about it and she said, "Yeah, it moved. How did you know?"
Certainly everyone has secrets; nearly everyone, secrets which if widely revealed would cause embarrassment and/or shame (I, for instance, once worked for a defense contractor, and wore a tie while doing it). But true facts that would lead to serious, concrete, devastating, harm, of the "Married Governor of New Jersey being blackmailed by former gay lover" level? I don't think so many people have secrets that dire.
databasenation
The UK comment about cash payment being morally wrong was in the context of tradespeople giving a discount to their clients if they pay them in cash, this way it is easier to deceive the taxman since the transaction is not recorded anywhere. In that context one can hardly argue about the morality of the practice since this same people will be using the benefits provided by the state but without paying their fair share according to the law.
It comes particularly handy for foreigners that are sending the money abroad, but the practice is by no means constrained to them, most local tradespeople will offer this as well.
All ya gotta do is rotate credit cards with a trusted circle of friends. My accounts buying record is that of a right-wing communist fundamentalist lesbian. You should see what I get in the way of targeted advertising...
The only way we avoid this is if companies learn to say, 'no' to some of the privacy-invading innovations they're pursuing.
Then there is no solution and this Ruin database will be built when contractors are in the markets. A Ruin database doesn't need to be a bad thing, we can for example eliminate much of the corruption, agents with fake identities etc. The problem occurs when a few has access and everybody else do not, the only way to destroy that advantage is to open up the Ruin database to public scrutiny; in other words – end of privacy.
Ok so you use an anonymous credit card... where do you get the items sent?
Oh, should I have sugar-coated that?
Why does Harvard Business Review always get credit for discussions and idea that people beat to death on Compuserve in the mid 90s?
Every rule has more than one consequence.