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< | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | The Dangers of Data Mining | | | A Siren's Song
The primary menace of data mining lies in its ability to allow corporations to hit all the right notes in appealing to unwary consumers, thereby making every advertisement a siren’s song. Vague titillation has been replaced by targeted temptation, as advertisement – perhaps solicitation is the more apt term – is now directed at an audience of one. Anniversary fast approaching? Been looking into that dream Caribbean vacation? Well, check out these low, low rates that even you can afford. And, if you need a little money to bridge the gap, well, we can help you with that too. | |
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> | | | | Of course, the uniformed consumer regards these offers not as dangerous, but as almost providential. He is being offered exactly what he’s looking for, shown just what he needed without ever really knowing he needed it. Like the oleander, however, the beauty is the danger. Consumers unthinkingly welcome the convenience and enticement of the perfectly tailored offers, and the corporations profit thereby. In effect, every consumer is like a wanderer lost in the desert, and data mining allows corporations to know the exact moment when he is so overcome by thirst that he will pay any price for a drink of water. | |
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> | | | | As a further insult, the corporations posit data mining not only as benign, but as benevolent. For example, Google alerts its users (read: almost everyone with an internet connection) that: “We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other Google services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services.” Graciously, “for certain services, [Google] may give [its users] the opportunity to opt out of combining such information.” Data mining is presented as a service to consumers, a magnanimously provided convenience inuring to the benefit of those who cannot see the snake for the apple. | |
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- Indentation won't mark a paragraph break: you must leave a blank line in the source. When paragraphed as you intend, your text is easier to read.
- I don't think you quite resolve the tension between data-mining that predicts what you want and data-mining that knows when you're desperate for a drink in the desert. The latter is a form of interaction that enables no repeat business. So are you sure there's a snake and is it about being overcharged? ENDCOLOR%
| | | Pictures of You | |
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< | The second identified danger of data mining is its reduction of individuals to commodities. As Jeffrey Rosen points out in this article, data mining represents not only an extreme invasion of privacy, but also a fracturing of individuality into a random survey of tastes, habits and purchases that are used to ensnare individuals-cum-consumers into a cycle of spending. There are two resulting problems. First, the dignity of individual human beings is degraded by an alchemy converting their tastes, passions and dreams into data used to separate them from their money. Once a human being is commoditized, it is easier to sell him carcinogenic products or ply him with debt from which he will never escape. Second, it is unlikely that any dissemination of purchases, wall posts and browsed websites can accurately and wholly limn the contours of an individual’s personality, status and situation. As this article demonstrates, data mining operates in broad strokes. Charging a bottle of water at Duane Reade may indicate a lack of available money, but it may also be the case that the purchaser finds – like I do – that paper burns a whole in his pocket faster than plastic, and thus prefers not to carry cash. However, data mining does not always provide for such subtle distinctions. Given, the decisions made by accumulators and analyzers of data mining identified by the article – denying credit, increasing interest rates – the dangers of such blanket and under-informed analysis are obvious. | >
> | The second identified danger of data mining is its reduction of individuals to commodities. As Jeffrey Rosen points out in this article, data mining represents not only an extreme invasion of privacy, but also a fracturing of individuality into a random survey of tastes, habits and purchases that are used to ensnare individuals-cum-consumers into a cycle of spending. There are two resulting problems. First, the dignity of individual human beings is degraded by an alchemy converting their tastes, passions and dreams into data used to separate them from their money.
- Perhaps the "dignity" was transcendental nonsense in the first place, as it took merely the smallest of inducements to cause people to give it up. Real dignity or integrity should have some staying power, don't you think?
Once a human being is commoditized, it is easier to sell him carcinogenic products or ply him with debt from which he will never escape.
- Maybe this connection is clear to you, but it isn't to me, so I'd welcome a sentence that explained itself a little better.
Second, it is unlikely that any dissemination of purchases, wall posts and browsed websites can accurately and wholly limn the contours of an individual’s personality, status and situation. As this article demonstrates, data mining operates in broad strokes. Charging a bottle of water at Duane Reade may indicate a lack of available money, but it may also be the case that the purchaser finds – like I do – that paper burns a whole in his pocket faster than plastic, and thus prefers not to carry cash. However, data mining does not always provide for such subtle distinctions. Given, the decisions made by accumulators and analyzers of data mining identified by the article – denying credit, increasing interest rates – the dangers of such blanket and under-informed analysis are obvious.
- If bad analysis has a cost, such parties will naturally decide whether to incur it or to refine their information further. Why should we be concerned about where there stopping-place is?
| | | Leviathan
The theory of social contract, roughly, posits that individuals cede freedom to a government in exchange for protection of their “life, health, liberty [and] possessions.” In the modern era, our possessions are no longer just threatened by marauders coming onto our land to steal our livestock or finery. As has been discussed, data mining may be used to deprive citizens of their possessions through an unconscionable pressure to buy, borrow or bargain. In the absence of an eleemosynary abandonment of data mining by corporations, it is the government’s place to restrict its use. Such restriction may be achieved through a federally mandated informed consent opt-in requirement coupled with an open-source statute. | |
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- Lots of forms of persuasion are used to separate fools from their money. False statements materially relied upon are fraud, which can surely be constitutionally prohibited. But how do you constitutionally prohibit learning facts about people legitimately, making inferences from those facts and trying to convince them of something, regardless of whether it is profitable to you?
| | | The informed consent opt-in requirement to data mining would protect consumers while respecting their autonomy, as well as mesh with familiar contract principles. Such a requirement, represented by a uniform, concise and explanatory terms of use would empower individuals to make knowledgeable decisions regarding dissemination of their private information while avoiding excessive nannyism. Also, the requirement would allow the parties to bargain more fairly. Corporations that sell information without individuals’ consent receive a windfall unknown to those individuals. An opt-in requirement would cause those corporations to ‘pay for’ that windfall. Moreover, an open-source statute mandating the publication of the internal code indicating how private data is shared after collection would further reduce the present asymmetry of information between corporations and individuals and additionally provide for informed bargaining. | |
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- Opt-in for what? Can you prohibit someone from thinking about available data unless someone else gives permission? What do you assume the constitutional limits on regulation here are?
| | | Conclusion
Data mining allows corporations to exploit and commoditize individuals, thereby threatening individuals' autonomy and possessions. Thus, the government should require heightened transparency to allow individuals to protect their identity and property. | |
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You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
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| | | I'm curious how you think government is going to be motivated to enact strong privacy legislation. It seems like all of the money and the power is in the hands of data miners. With such enormous commercial incentives to have loose privacy protections, wouldn't industry lobbyists be able to stop any Congressional proposals?
People just don't seem very fired up about privacy protection. Wouldn't something drastic need to happen to change that? |
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