“What’s your generation’s choice?” Big data and privacy protection

"Saying I don’t care about privacy because I have nothing to hide.  

Saying I don’t care about free speech because I have nothing to say."

Introduction

Lately, the burst of Hollywood film "Snowden" once again arouses the public for this legendary whistleblower and the discussion on information security. PRISM, NSA and more words related to them have become the hot topics among people around the globe. 

There has always been a controversy between the advantages brought by Big data era and the anxiousness from information privacy security, contributing two representative powers in such a game theory. One on hand, people, especially the millionaires who are born in the information age, are now living in a world bombarded with information, data, and social media. Human race embraces the tremendous improvement in quality of material and spiritual life, as well as the revolutions in ways of communicating, information gathering and problem solving. On the other hand, endless information privacy crisis keeps emerging, overshadowing the uncertain future of big data. 

It is fair to say that privacy security problem has always entwined with the human history, however, due to the rapid development of information technology, data mining, analyzing, and predicting techniques, process of privacy protection is facing more unprecedented challenges and uncertain influences. 

This article will discuss the challenges brought by big data era and some deep thoughts of privacy protection from the dimensions of governments, enterprises and individuals. 

Government

Terrorists? Invisible hand?

Conflict between personal privacy and national interests.

From the beginning day when governments gained abilities and skills to control and utilize big data, the so-called "invisible hand" started to reach each single individual, not only their own citizens, but also other countries’ citizens around the world. 

Due to the existence of a huge technical advantage, resource monopoly and asymmetric information, it couldn't be truer that most governments in the world monitor their citizens’ both private and public information. For instance, PRISM in the U.S. 

However, it is difficult for citizens to monitor their government in terms of the gap between powers to compete. 

Such as the recent Hillary Clinton email scandal, general public is always at a disadvantage in the process of asking for information disclosure and transparency from government. 

From the perspective of modern democracy, free speech, information privacy and so on belong to human rights and individual property, government is forbidden to assess, interfere or even violate personal property, but based on big data technology, the government is able to silently monitor individuals’ information or privacy through their telephone, SMS, email and social media as information sources without being notice by individuals. 

Although the United States government claimed that PRISM was proposed to investigate and monitor information from potential or existing terrorists, While Snowden refuted that even if the purpose of PRISM is to screen the terrorists at the expense of the violation of user's privacy security, the efficiency is relatively low . The conclusion is that it is inefficient, unethical and even illegal. 

By this token, at the national level, there is a certain conflict between personal interests and national interests, but when dealing with the relationship between government and people, government still needs to put more efforts into finding a relatively fair and effective mechanism to avoid any potential crisis.

The absolute prohibition and repression is not a permanent solution, only by focusing on the development of technology, can government efficiently utilize the advantages of big data to identify and distinguish potential terrorists from the public. 

Enterprises

Commercial value? Customer first? Political pressure?

Conflict between privacy security and business principles.

Big data is significant for enterprises to capture the needs of consumers, as well as enhancing user experiences, product or service customer satisfaction.

Nowadays, nearly all industries are benefiting from the infrastructural bonus from the Internet, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and information technology, etc. 

It is the first time in history that human race obtains the capability to detect and explain the principles behind complexity of business phenomena, even predicting the future trend of business, by applying data analysis skills to solve the real problems. 

For example, in real life, companies collect user's search and past consumption records to trigger demand, via GPS positioning and algorithms to predict consumers’ preferences, future consumption trends. Besides, data-based precisely targeted advertisements are endowed with the ability to push real-time product information to existing and potential customers, which can bring the benefit of time saving, convenience for customers and premium profit for companies. However, accessing to or even storing the user's consumption records, contacts list and geographic location information, will violate their privacy to some extent. 

In a survey of 11000 interviewees in 11 countries, Ovum Co. found that 68% respondents said they would be more willing to use the search engine if their personal information would not be tracked. Only 14% respondents said they believed the Internet companies were honest about the use of their personal data. Obliviously, consumers are still concerned much about information security.

The actual situation of enterprises is that they are always stuck in the external pressures from government, customers and profit. First, under the pressure from government, companies have to provide some specific users information waiting for future inspection. Second, because business models are dependently based on consumers’ trust and contract agreement, enterprises have the responsibility to protect customers’ data. Third, to seek maximizing benefits, companies need to collect, analyze data collected and maximize utilization of existing limited data. Consequently, companies in the face of many uncertain situations have to make the appropriate choice.

For example, in February 2016, Apple refused to unlock user’s iPhone when required by FBI, Apple's real purpose is probably not want to open a dangerous precedent for violating users’ privacy. CEO Cook said that Apple is not in sympathy with the terrorists, however if they succumb to the requirements of the government, it will endanger millions of law-abiding users' data security. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, Huawei and other technology companies are on the side of Apple.

In China, from the beginning of March 2016, a total of seven Chinese cloud drive service providers have partly or entirely shut down the cloud drive service by the requirement of government’ inspection. 

One reason is derived from the immature profit model of these emerging data storage service providers, they had been providing free service for a while without generating enough income to cover their cost. 

The other reason behind this, and more importantly, lies in the tremendous amount of illegal and tortious content stored in users' drive. They are forced to shut down for rectification by government. 

Multiple factors, including profit model, privacy protection, information security, inspection on illegal contents and corporation with regulations, are entwined with each other, throwing companies to an uncertain future.

How to develop data technology in order to precisely distinguish discrimination and illegal content from personal privacy is a problem that needs to be solved, at the same time, the construction of relevant laws must follow up with the pace of technology.

Individuals

Human nature? Freedom?

Conflict between privacy security, social relation and human nature.

With the considerable improvement in computing capacity, any individual can be precisely identified by collecting and analyzing the information of gender, age, educational level, social activities, occupation, geographical location and so on. That is, algorithm is prevailingly used in precise positioning of the individual, everyone is living “nakedly” in the world of data. 

Even the worst situation is that someday privacy will no longer exist, the problem lies in human daily life, and will dramatically affect big data, including those positive and negative impacts. 

On one hand, due to open, interactive, fast-responding features of data environment, comparing to the past, people started to prefer “actively” sharing their personal information, such as occupation, experience, social activities, business dealings, preference hobbies, entertainment habits on the network like Facebook, Twitter, WeChat and other social medias. 

On the other hand, the awakening of self-awareness increases their awareness of protecting the privacy.

As a result, sharing and protecting in human nature have had a confrontation in a certain extent. When facing intropersonal conflict, everyone needs to be calm and think objectively, concentrating on self-reflection, to help others and society as well. 

Recently, TV drama "Black Mirror" has become the popular topic which people are following and talking about.

Its expressional theme is more or less emphasized on the fear, depression, distortion and release of human nature, facing the challenges from advances in technology and data, which causes people to think deeply about their future. 

Ending

All in all, these conflicts in different dimensions are basically derived from the contradicts between open source big data and private personal information. All sorts of powers and roles play against each other in silence under such circumstance. 

What are the duties and responsibilities of government, enterprises and individuals under the background of such era? Is information technology a sharp sword or a solid shield? There seem no accurate answers for these questions, though, one thing still we can be sure about is that the developing trend of big data would never stop. 

Citing from Snowden’s online live speech earlier this month at McGill University, Canada.

“We are at a decision point and we could have a very dark future or very bright future, but the ultimate determination of which road we take won’t be my decision, it won’t be the government’s decision, it will be your generations' decision, and I am looking forward to seeing what it is that you guys actually decide.”

Perhaps the key to solving these problems is in the hands of our generation.