"Reality Mining" Resets the Privacy Debate 209
An anonymous reader sends us to the NYTimes for a sobering look at the frontiers of "collective intelligence," also called in the article "reality mining." These techniques go several steps beyond the pedestrian version of "data mining" with which the Pentagon and/or DHS have been flirting. The article profiles projects at MIT, UCLA, Google, and elsewhere in networked sensor research and other forms of collective intelligence. "About 100 students at MIT agreed to completely give away their privacy to get a free smartphone. 'Now, when he dials another student, researchers know. When he sends an e-mail or text message, they also know. When he listens to music, they know the song. Every moment he has his Windows Mobile smartphone with him, they know where he is, and who's nearby.' ... Indeed, some collective-intelligence researchers argue that strong concerns about privacy rights are a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. ... 'For most of human history, people have lived in small tribes where everything they did was known by everyone they knew,' Dr. Malone said. 'In some sense we're becoming a global village. Privacy may turn out to have become an anomaly.'"
About privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
In theory the government could use data mining to distort reality and accuse someone falsely of some crime, but really, if the government is to the point that they want to go out of their way to accuse people, there are lots of tried and tested methods that have been used throughout history. Privacy or lack of privacy is not going to make a bit of difference in whom the government arrests or kills.
If someone DOES want to kill me, having that kind of information would be helpful, but realistically, if someone wants to kill me, there are so many opportunities to kill me that just by following me around a bit they will have no problem finding a time to knock me off. Hit men have been doing their jobs for millennia, without modern technology.
The point of all this is, some people worry too much about their privacy.
"Privacy" in a crowd (Score:3, Interesting)
Nobody thinks twice about talking on their phone in public. Anyone can listen in if they wish, but they usually don't. It's not privacy that most people have issue with, it's being singled out.
As has been said many times, it's not a problem so long as everyone is treated the same way. General trends and statistics are fine, it's being the focus of attention of Big Brother that gets creepy.
Re:Providers should bear some of the responsibilit (Score:3, Interesting)
Not going to happen. The social networking sites are financially fuelled by people's private info. They won't discourage people from giving up as much as possible.
We all have secrets, but it can only be a good thing when people screw up their careers/lives because they gave too much away on facebook. In a Darwinian sense I mean.
Re:Privacy as a recent phenomenon (Score:5, Interesting)
in other words, a tribe is established by who we choose to share information with, and although we can now share information globally without respect to boundaries, that doesn't mean we're a part of a "global tribe" because the tribe is still a subset of the global system. Where who we choose to share info with might have once been an issue of geographic happenstance, it no longer a sufficient criteria for the designation of a tribe. There is no longer a one to one mapping of the people in close proximity and the people who have open access to my information and actions.
Unlike the researchers, I have lived (Score:3, Interesting)
But where should privacy start/stop? (Score:2, Interesting)
100 Students gave away their privacy to get a cell phone that probably isn't an open operating system.
All the talk is corporations need to keep their secrets, but the people don't need privacy.
Re:About privacy (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Unlike the researchers, I have lived (Score:1, Interesting)
but you won't know how many phone calls someone makes a day or what channel he watches on TV or listens on the radio. There is an unwritten treshold of 'decency' where as long as what you do is not over this decency threshold
I don't doubt that, but perhaps that's because these activities are so mundane and un-interesting that people don't want to take notice.
When people's movements are collected and tracked over long periods, though, patterns emerge, which can be much more titillating than seemingly innoculus movements.
Hmmm, here's another point of view (Score:3, Interesting)
What business do you have keeping information from the rest of society which could be used for a social good? Do you really think you live in some kind of vacuum where only you the individual matters?
How about if all these 'evil' insurance companies can drastically reduce the overall cost of health care to a point where it saves a large number of lives? Is it ethical for you to want to withhold that information simply because it benefits you personally to do so?
Human society is more than the sum of the individuals which make it up, and the interests of that society are more than the sum of the interests of its individual members.
Not that I think we should mindlessly surrender all privacy, but to insist on mindlessly guarding everything about ourselves we are paying a price, and that price may well be higher than the price of openness. It may also be a lot higher than we think it is. Seems to me the issue bears a lot more study.
Re:About privacy (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean like speed cameras on motorways?
Re:Don't use carp like BMI to say someone is over (Score:2, Interesting)
Obviously, I'm overweight.
And it's my fault?
The analogy is inapt (Score:3, Interesting)
Attempts to have disclosure of information from the former to the latter exist (eg google "freedom of information", "open government" or "corporate disclosue") but they are usually weak, because of the laziness of members of the latter.