Privacy

Privacy

A few years ago there were huge debates world over about net neutrality. It was about whether service providers, search engines can choose what to show and what not. Their argument was that since we provide so we decide. Argument was that in these days of increasing importance of data and internet it is citizens right to have access to everything and to chose from those. Curtailing net neutrality would axe fundamental right to information.

In 2016 US presidential elections its accused that Facebok shared user data with its customers without permission. Cambridge Talentica in UK is accused to have used that data on their data analytics to know about inclination of users and then based on those analyses promote  selective material to influence americans’ voting decisions. Cambridge Analytica closed down 2017. 

Our personal data today has evolved into being a significant portion of our identity. So data is private and data analytics are paparazzi. If somebody peeps into our bathroom then our privacy of physical body is breached, for that one person. If a camera is placed there without our knowledge and recording is shared /sold to say hundreds or thousands then our physical privacy is breached to that much wider extent. Converting viewing to data caused wider breach of our physical privacy.

Suppose a popular fitness club developed data analytics technology. They fix cameras in all shower rooms, changing rooms and from those recordings of users they analyses physical dimensions, skin texture and colour, perspiration, sound recording of what users sing or speak there and so on. Then they sell these analyses to companies making clothing and dinnerwares, to matrimonials, to beauty products, to political marketers like Prashant Kishor. 

Until now this was group data without identifying individuals. Going further, based on their facial recognition software they identify individuals and link this data to their members’ database, and from there to geographical locations, to social media, to professional affiliations and then to family members and friends and co-relate all these to help interested businesses to present selected material, and in a way direct selections, behaviour, choices, opinions of individually and collectively. Important to note here that in all these, from camera recording to presenting selected materials there was no human intervention at any moment, and in classical sense there may was misuse but not breach of privacy. But the effects and impact was profoundly deeper and wider than a person watching us though a peep hole. With data and data analytics so much can be known about you that your name, even whole of your physical identity becomes almost irrelevant.

They can get know more about you than you know yourself. And I haven’t yet even mentioned government !