Big Data and the 'New' Privacy Tradeoff

Big Data & Society

In The Black Box Society, Frank Pasquale develops a critique of asymmetrical power: corporations’ secrecy is highly valued by legal orders, but persons’ privacy is continually invaded by these corporations. This response proceeds in three stages. I first highlight important contributions of The Black Box Society to our understanding of political and legal relationships between persons and corporations. I then critique a key metaphor in the book (the one-way mirror, Pasquale’s image of asymmetrical surveillance), and the role of transparency and ‘watchdogging’ in its primary policy prescriptions. I then propose ‘relational selfhood’ as an important new way of theorizing interdependence in an era of artificial intelligence and Big Data, and promoting optimal policies in these spheres.

2018

he Snowden revelations about National Security Agency surveillance, starting in 2013, along with the ambiguous complicity of internet companies and the international controversies that followed provide a perfect segue into con- temporary conundrums of surveillance and Big Data. Attention has shifted from late C20th information technologies and networks to a C21st focus on data, currently crystallized in ‘‘Big Data.’’ Big Data intensifies certain surveillance trends associated with information technology and networks, and is thus implicated in fresh but fluid configurations. This is considered in three main ways: One, the capacities of Big Data (including metadata) intensify surveillance by expanding interconnected datasets and analytical tools. Existing dynamics of influence, risk-management, and control increase their speed and scope through new techniques, especially predictive analytics. Two, while Big Data appears to be about size, qualitative change in surveillance practices is...

Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application, 2016

The current data revolution is changing the conduct of social science research as increasing amounts of digital and administrative data become accessible for use. This new data landscape has created significant tension around data privacy and confidentiality. The risk–utility theory and models underpinning statistical disclosure limitation may be too restrictive for providing data confidentially owing to the growing volumes and varieties of data and the evolving privacy policies. Science and society need to move to a trust-based approach from which both researchers and participants benefit. This review discusses the explosive growth of the new data sources and the parallel evolution of privacy policy and governance, with a focus on access to data for research. We provide a history of privacy policy, statistical disclosure limitation research, and record linkage in the context of this brave new world of data.

We live in an age of "big data." Data have become the raw material of production, a new source for immense economic and social value. Advances in data mining and analytics and the massive increase in computing power and data storage capacity have expanded by orders of magnitude the scope of information available for businesses and government. Data are now available for analysis in raw form, escaping the confines of structured databases and enhancing researchers' abilities to identify correlations and conceive of new, unanticipated uses for existing information. In addition, the increasing number of people, devices, and sensors that are now connected by digital networks has revolutionized the ability to generate, communicate, share, and access data. Data creates enormous value for the world economy, driving innovation, productivity, efficiency, and growth. At the same time, the "data deluge" presents privacy concerns which could stir a regulatory backlash dampening the data economy and stifling innovation. In order to craft a balance between beneficial uses of data and individual privacy, policymakers must address some of the most fundamental concepts of privacy law, including the definition of "personally identifiable information," the role of individual control, and the principles of data minimization and purpose limitation. This article emphasizes the importance of providing individuals with access to their data in usable format. This will let individuals share the wealth created by their information and incentivize developers to offer user-side features and applications harnessing the value of big data. Where individual access to data is impracticable, data are likely to be deidentified to an extent sufficient to diminish privacy concerns. In addition, since in a big data world it is often not the data but rather the inferences drawn from them that give cause for concern, organizations should be required to disclose their decisional criteria.

Business Ethics and Leadership, 2018

This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of big data in the contemporary world in terms of what big data is, how it functions, how it can be leveraged towards the common good and what limitations can prevent it from transforming its power to a springboard for development and growth. The main purpose of the research is to get a first grip on what big data is and its implications positive or negative to our world. Under this prism, the author of this paper tries to encapsulate in this literary analysis some of the many ways that big data can help us in many industries like the health and care, insurance etc. and to underline the importance of its handling due to severe confidential data breaches, like in the case of the U.S. last elections. Systematization of literary sources and approaches for solving the problem of big data's limitations indicate that big data need to be handled with extreme care and caution. As sensitive personal information is involved, the companies which use big data in order to understand their customers' approach and way of thinking towards them in order to increase their sales funnel, need to handle it in a very cautious way, especially when they outsourcing that procedure to third party companies. This paper presents the results of an in-depth literary analysis on the subject, which showed that big data is undeniably an important part of our societies and that it has specific characteristics (i.e. speed, volume etc.) which make its analysis a quite challenging procedure, which needs to involve new techniques like data mining. The results of the research can be useful for the researcher of the future in terms of examining the connection between big data, artificial intelligence and personal information. This subject is critical and needs to be addressed in a coherent way as the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning will arise new issues on how intelligent machines will handle personal information in the years to come.

International Data Privacy Law, 2018

Corporations and governments are collecting data more frequently, and collecting, storing, and using it for longer periods Commercial and government actors are collecting, storing, analysing, and sharing increasingly greater quantities of personal information about individuals over progressively longer periods of time. Advances in technology, such as the proliferation of Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers and highly-accurate sensors embedded in consumer devices, are leading to new sources of data that offer data at more frequent intervals and at finer levels of detail. New methods of data storage such as cloud storage are more efficient and less costly than previous technologies and are contributing to large amounts of data being retained for longer Key Points Governments and businesses are increasingly collecting, analysing, and sharing detailed information about individuals over long periods of time. Vast quantities of data from new sources and novel methods for large-scale data analysis promise to yield deeper understanding of human characteristics, behaviour, and relationships and advance the state of science, public policy, and innovation. The collection and use of fine-grained personal data over time, at the same time, is associated with significant risks to individuals, groups, and society at large. This article examines a range of long-term research studies in order to identify the characteristics that drive their unique sets of risks and benefits and the practices established to protect research data subjects from long-term privacy risks. We find that many big data activities in government and industry settings have characteristics and risks similar to those of long-term research studies, but are subject to less oversight and control. We argue that the risks posed by big data over time can best be understood as a function of temporal factors comprising age, period, and frequency and non-temporal factors such as population diversity, sample size, dimensionality, and intended analytic use.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Can informational privacy law survive Big Data? A few scholars have pointed to the inadequacy of the current legal framework to Big Data, especially the collapse of notice and consent, the principles of data minimization and data specification. 1 These are first steps, but more is needed. 2 One suggestion is to conceptualize Big Data in terms of property: 3 Perhaps data subjects should have a property right in their data, so that when others process it, subjects can share the wealth. However, privacy has a complex relationship with property. Lawrence Lessig's 1999 proposal to propertize personal data, was criticized: instead of more protection, said the critics, there will be more commodification. 4 Does Big Data render property once again a viable option to save our privacy? To better understand the informational privacy implications of Big Data and evaluate the property option, this comment undertakes two paths. First, I locate Big Data as the newest point on a continuum of Small-Medium-Large-Extra Large data situations. This path indicates that Big Data is not just "more of the same", but a new informational paradigm. Second, I begin a query about the property/privacy relationship, by juxtaposing informational privacy with property, real and intangible, namely copyright. This path indicates that current property law is unfit to address Big Data.

The growth of information technology systems, the amount of data and information collected along the extraordinary types of online participations and communications through the different social media blogs or platforms have increasingly been challenging the different concepts of privacy. Provided the emphasis on data stipulated in privacy matters in Big Data, it becomes imperious to focus on the ethical, social and legal concerns that surround the big data center in more depth. Recently, different strategies have been undertaken in collecting data from various sources of data, which include social media platforms, open data systems as well as potentially data that has limited access to the public like data on local crime patterns and the interpretation of different compilations of these sources of data. As a result, there have been numerous privacy concerns that have been raised and should consequently be addressed within the team project and in a consecutive manner. This report emphasizes on the ethical, social and legal features of big data whereby each of the three features include diverse dimensions that are connected to the different concerns of privacy. Privacy is not a concern that is new in the universe, even though it has over the last centuries been influenced by and co-developed with other new types of technological developments. As a result, the privacy concern has endlessly been developed with the recent developments in information technology. According to a study conducted by Louis and Samuel in 1980, the two authors sent a warning to the universe on their article thus triggering the initial national discussion regarding the legitimate right to privacy. Since time immemorial, most of the debates regarding privacy have been connected to technological enhancements. The concerns highlighted by Samuel and Louis are connected to the reproduction, publication and collection of photographs. After two centuries, through the proliferation and development of the internet, discussions about privacy and endeavors to intellectualize it have attained unparalleled momentum. Nevertheless,