Is Data Privacy an Oxymoron?
(Published: 2019/06/02)
Data. When you think data, you think numbers. Statistics. 10 girls in a class of 20, say. Data is not just statistics. In our modern world, we are the data*.* We spend so much time sharing our experiences through social media, uploading our daily notes and photos to the cloud, that data is our lives in another language. You don’t tell a person walking down the street your personality, where you live, the name and date of birth of everyone in your family. You don’t share where you work, or whether you’ve been to jail, because it’s your life and you don’t know them, and who knows what they could do with that information. If you wouldn’t give this information to a stranger, why would you give it to a company when you sign up to their services? Because you trust them. You skim the terms and conditions or flick past them at a rapid rate because you trust that this huge company’s service, which all your friends use, is safe. You think to yourself, ‘this company can benefit me in this way, and it’s just standard that I give over this information about myself in return’. Why is this standard? How can we trust companies who’s main objective is profit. When you sign up for a cloud service, like Google, or a social media service, like Instagram, you’re signing up for those companies to collect your data. This includes the data they analyse from your online activities, data so diverse you couldn’t possibly imagine. If you think that this data is safe, with privacy laws an all, you’re wrong. If they have it, others can get it. And you’re trusting a stranger to keep it safe.
Data scandals are not uncommon and internet privacy issues are at an all time high. A recent and widely publicised example of a data leak is the Cambridge Analytica scandal which entailed Facebook sharing the data of over 87 million users with Cambridge Analytica, a data analysis company, who then allegedly used this to influence Brexit and the US election. Cambridge Analytica CEO, Alexander Nix, denies the allegations and tells The Spectator that psychographics is “absolute nonsense”. What is psychographics, you ask? Nix explained this very well in a presentation about the power of big data in global elections at Concordia Annual Summit in 2016. Psychographic data is more than just your age and gender. It’s your favourite type of ice cream, whether you’re an anxious person, or like RnB as opposed to Pop. It’s your personality and it is data that should not be in the wrong hands. In 2014, a personality quiz app called ThisIsYourDigitalLife was created by data scientist, Aleksander Kogan and was downloaded about 270,000 times. The personal information of these users was then shared to Cambridge Analytica. Maybe you’re wondering how the breach of the data of 270,000 users became a breach of around 87 million users. This is because ThisIsYourDigitalLife was linked with Facebook and those 270,000 people had Facebook friends. The app not only accessed the information about that user, but also about anyone who was their friend on Facebook.
At the Concordia Annual Summit, Nix went into great depth about how Cambridge Analytica could narrow down a marketing campaign for the US election using psychographic profiling, exactly what he later describes as “absolute nonsense”. He gave the example of targeting a certain group of people who would definitely vote and only needed to be tipped a little. He narrowed down their personalities and a specific issue they particularly cared about, for example, gun rights. As he put it,
“Now we know that we need a message on gun rights, it needs to be a persuasion message and it needs to be nuanced according to the certain personality we’re interested in.”Alexander Nix (Cambridge Analytica CEO), Concordia Annual Summit 2016
He says himself that blanket advertising is dead. The way that data may or may not have been used to influence the election is dangerous. What can we call democracy when we might be being targeted and influenced? What is privacy when our data is being controlled by huge companies that are exactly what’s in the job description: companies. We forget that the companies that provide these solutions are commercial and their main goal is profit. How can we trust our data in the hands of major entities that could abuse our trust at any given moment? Cambridge Analytica can apologise all they like after they’ve shared your data, but once your data is out, it’s out.
África Periáñez, a data scientist who works to market video games uses AI and the data from the way people play video games to tailor their experience. She focuses on gamers called Whales who play video games for a long time, and spend large amounts on in-game purchases. Half the revenue video games achieve comes from Whales. To put that in perspective, Fornite, the biggest game in the world, has a revenue of 15 billion dollars. How does this relate to data and privacy? Well, data companies like Perianez’s analyse more than just what you like and dislike about a game. They can tell, from whether you turn left or right, a seemingly insignificant decision, your personality, gender, age and other factors and use this to make you spend more and keep coming back, leading to an alternate form of gambling, tailored directly to you. It’s drawing you in in a way a slot machine never could. Ethically, game developers are using your data to physically addict you to the game. You know those mystery boxes? Spin and you could get a new character, or some coins, or a free pass so you can continue from the same level after dying. These little games of chance called loot boxes are a disguised form of gambling. Modern games are studying you and are studying the next generation, us. And as long as we have major entities holding our information, we will never have privacy or security on the internet. We will never be able to trust.
Just over 50% of the worldwide population uses the World Wide Web, a centralised web. A centralised web is where there is central authority from companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, YouTube and Instagram. Central authority is the reason incidents like the Cambridge Analytica scandal can occur at all. A centralised web isn’t the only option we have. The decentralised web or the DWeb is where there is no central authority, everybody owns their own data and data cannot be stolen as it is not ‘owned’ by any major entities. This can be achieved using technology called blockchain, which is already used in some startup peer to peer (P2P) web services and in cryptocurrency. Our progression to a digital society is key to having a private, safe and secure world in the future. Why keep using something that leaves our data susceptible when we can have our data secure instead?
So, how does blockchain work? Blockchain removes the need for a middle-man. To upload something to the web, you would no longer need to upload it through Google or another cloud-based service. You would automatically upload to the web and verify your identity through a series of algorithms and you don’t have to trust a company with your information. Blockchain is already being widely used in cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is a digital form of currency which allows you to complete transactions anonymously. Let’s say you transfer $50 to another person. Something called a ‘block’ representing the transaction you wish to make is distributed across the entire web. It can be accessed by anyone. The trick is, you have your own private key that represents your identity, which then gets magically converted into a key anyone can see, but only very powerful supercomputers can decode. There is a public ledger which is like an endless receipt for your shopping, except it includes the entire world’s shopping. Each purchase is verified by checking if the previous purchase was valid. It’s a very complicated process but the main idea is, your transaction is anonymous but can be verified by anyone, using the public ledger. Your data is being verified by maths and is not in the hands of major entities. This same process can apply with the Dweb. The Dweb is based on a P2P network, where things on the internet aren’t at a specific location. You have to pay people to ‘rent’ these locations and upload your content. In everyday terms, the location is the URL or link to a website. In the Dweb, you don’t need a location for each thing. In the current web, you can’t automatically upload something to the internet without going through a middle man like Instagram, because you are a user. A P2P network is setup so everybody’s devices are servers as well as users. You can automatically upload anything directly because you no longer have to ‘rent’ a location to upload it to. With P2P networks, nobody owns the content on the internet because everyone has a copy of the internet. And, P2P networks are harder to hack, because the information on the internet is constantly being transferred between devices and is not in a central location. The information on the public ledger cannot be changed or removed as if you change one public ledger there are still many true copies on other systems to prove that copy incorrect. It’s a system that can monitor and verify every movement on the web, while keeping it anonymous. There are still potential security threats with a P2P network but modern P2P networks are relatively new and have less security threats than the World Wide Web which has been operating on a global basis since 1991.
The decentralised web is a real solution to a very real issue but it is not a solution even the greatest minds of our modern world can initiate on their own. They need you to stop trusting and start noticing where your data is going. They need you to stay informed and at some point in the very near future, download a decentralised network for yourself and be part of the revolution.
–Charlie B.
References:
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