Choices on technology put privacy in the past

Society's love affair with technological convenience shows no sign of slowing. There's an app for everything; we want it all and we want it now. That's clear from the long lines for each new iPhone, Android, and OS.

Forgotten is the digital footprint left by every click; we hardly balk at the privacy we're trading. A government agency mines phone and Internet data? Appalling, we say. Yet daily, millions reveal intimate details of their lives in public domain (even criminal activity; e.g., posts about underage drinking and drug use) without blinking. If this seems incongruous, that's because it is.

But if you think the only miners are Big Brother and targeted advertisers, think again. Twitter approached the Library of Congress and asked them to start archiving every Tweet since the company began in 2006 - for posterity. The LOC said yes. That's a half billion Tweets daily being stored, with requests for data from doctors, journalists, scientists, and historians flooding in.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt said that in just 48 hours, humans now add as much data as we produced from "the dawn of civilization to the year 2003." A lot may seem like junk information, but one man's junk is another's gold.

Very public gold.

All those search terms - along with texts and calls all part of "big data" - can be put to good use. The Centers for Disease Control uses hospital reports to track disease outbreaks. Waiting for that data can take weeks and by then a flu virus can go wild, killing 45,000 Americans annually. Why not use Google searches, suggests a 2009 Johns Hopkins University study? Spikes in search terms such as "child flu remedies" may help predict outbreaks and rein them in faster.

It's not just the CDC who can use big data for laudable aim, as an in-depth article in the Aug. 12 Christian Science Monitor examines. Researchers of all kinds want access to mined data to save time and money, and expand the scope and credibility of results beyond a handful of study subjects. The UN is trying to track poverty in Africa by trolling for signs of joblessness. Heard of "predictive policing," i.e. using algorithms to collect localized data on past crimes to predict future ones? Firefighters and hurricane hunters similarly use big data to predict high-risk locations.

Big data are certainly helpful, but not without risk. According to one Pew survey, nearly a quarter (21 percent) of Internet users have had an email or social network account hacked, 12 percent have been stalked, and 11 percent have had financial information stolen. The FBI uses Facebook and the like to catch criminals, and scammers use them to defraud, both by direct and indirect "friending" with false pages. Credit card companies use big data and localized trends to determine credit scores, sometimes lowering it because others who shop similarly have lower repayment rates. Oppressive governments such as China's and Iran's use Internet data to stifle free speech and imprison journalists, human rights lawyers, and other critics.

We consent to most, if not all, of it by clicking "agree" to those long notices few read when creating the account or downloading the app. In that sense the erosion of privacy by "big data" is no intrusive force; we invited it and tend to squawk only when it doesn't suit us.

Technology will not retreat. The most we can do is reconsider how much we share in its all-too-public domain, and how easily.

Intimacy, privacy, the gift of selective sharing seems to be fading as fast as egocentrism rises. With it go the beauty, strength, and confidence of true and distinguishable closeness, without which human beings feel less secure. I wonder; could this be at the root of our heightened sense of fear and divide?

Sholeh Patrick is a neo-luddite and columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Contact her at [email protected].