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| | form of interaction that enables no repeat business. So are you
sure there's a snake and is it about being overcharged? ENDCOLOR% |
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- Perhaps the snake metaphor should be traded for one involving the Trojan Horse. As you note, there is a difference between data mining that is convenient, or even informative, and data mining that is predatory and manipulative. The problem I was trying to identify is that the latter is facilitated by the presence of the former. Frankly, I like when Amazon notes the last book I bought was Ham on Rye, and then suggests I next read Hunger. There, the convenience outweighs the intrusion into my privacy and the resulting profiling. However, the danger arises where there are a thousand intrusions, allowing for a more robust and sinister profiling. Also, I don't think the danger inheres in just being overcharged; that's just a fact of capitalism. I think the true problem, the problem you identified in class when discussing data mining and the endemic of foreclosures and bankruptcies, is when complex goods or services - not just books - are being foisted upon people at the exact moment they are unable and unwilling to truly understand the risks of clicking yes.
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| | Pictures of You
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. |
| | cause people to give it up. Real dignity or integrity should
have some staying power, don't you think? |
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- Dignity is, probably, too stylized and nonsensical term. On the other hand, human history is full of people who sold their dignity for a few pieces of silver. While the word dignity might aspire to something more transcendental, in practice it does seem to often be traded for the smallest of inducements.
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| | 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.
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- Here, the point is related to Stalin's observation that while one death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic. Assuming any sort of compunction on the part of cigarette vendors or predatory creditors, the fact that they are plying their wares not on people as such - that is, on Eben Moglen or Brad Ehrichman - but on aggregations of statistics must make it personally less horrifying for them to continue their business model.
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| | 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
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| | further. Why should we be concerned about where there
stopping-place is? |
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- I think the concern arises out of the victims of those decisions injured between now and the time when the analysis is either refined or discontinued.
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| | 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. |
| | convince them of something, regardless of whether it is
profitable to you? |
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> | * I would think that, at the very least, the opt-in requirement would allow consumers to consider the price of some of the conveniences they have gained from living in the internet society. While it may be the that the corporations are learning this information legitimately, the opt-in requirement would allow people to be more careful in disclosing it, as well as more able to recognize the fruits of that disclosure. I was a toy store cashier once. We had to ask everyone's zip code when they checked out. Almost every customer asked why we were gathering that information, and most didn't consent to giving it. I think that at least letting people know data is being culled will have some effect on behavior. |
| | 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.
- Opt-in for what? Can you prohibit someone from thinking
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| | do you assume the constitutional limits on regulation here are?
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> | * As discussed in my reply above, I would center the regulations on how much information can be gathered without informing the consumer that it is being collected and analyzed. I agree that there is not much you can do to say don't consider this information once it's out there. Obviously, that would lead to absurd results. Would the car salesman not be able to consider the clothes, watch and shoes of two different people coming into his showroom in deciding whom to pitch first and which car to show which customer? |
| | 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. |