BIG DATA: Surveillance

Data is all around us and we’re constantly looking for ways to join it together. The novel 1984 portrayed this dystopian vision of the future; a future characterised by double speak, thought crying and universal and constant surveillance. It warns about totalitarianism but in reality, does this have a real message for a contemporary audience? As the director Michael Futcher has made clear, when 1984 was played in theatres in 2012 the show sold out so this was an indication that there was an enormous desire from the audiences to understand the nature of this type of power and the way it related to our own society. It is now getting more and more difficult for people to escape surveillance.

Mark Pesce, a futurist and technology analyst and associate in USYD digital cultures program, explains that 1984 resonates with so many people as well as this idea of a surveillance society saying, “For 29 years after 1984 we really thought we’d dodged a bullet, that western democracies were safe, powerful and we were all living in freedom. Then last year when the Snowden revelations came out it started to become clearer and clearer that in fact 1984 wasn’t far off the mark: that the NSA and its associated organisations were all colluding in massive wide-scale surveillance of populations and specific targeted surveillance of world leaders” (Funnell 2014). The NSA (National Security Agency) has this capability and is using it to record everything. People are making this surveillance even easier by using smart phones that track their every move. Pesce believes that there are many benefits of connected culture; it is just up to people to discover how to control their own privacy and sharing. At present it is still difficult to do so in the market place but as this need to control privacy rises, cultural techniques will be established that allow better modulation of privacy.

Rob Hillard from Deloitte also sees our relationship with surveillance as extremely complex. “Yet at the heart of the surveillance society he says is data. Lots of Data. Big Data” (Funnell 2015). The debate around big data is nothing new, but as Hillard points out, trying to avoid being tracked online is now becoming suspicious. You are at risk of being responsible for a crime that happens while you are offline. He ultimately believes that living without leaving a trail is easy if you want to live as a hermit but even so, in The Bourne Supremacy protagonist Jason Bourne tries to escape the CIA by going off the grid in India, only to still miraculously be tracked there.

Being watched has become a part of life today. There are indeed safety benefits that come from constantly being watched e.g. by lifeguards. So even though people say they don’t like being watched, there are also times when they’d want to be watched. Funnily enough, people are comfortable being watched if they’ve given consent, but public surveillance cameras are recording us without our permission. In turn, surveillance has manifested into a one way mirror in which we are watched by cannot watch back.

REFERENCES

Brew, N. 2013, ‘Surveillance in society- global communications monitoring and data retention’, Parliament of Australia, viewed 23 August 2015, .

Brew, N. 2012, ‘Telecommunications data retention- an overview, Parliamentary Library, viewed 24 August 2015, .

Funnell, A. 2014, ‘1984 and our modern surveillance society’, Future Tense ABC, viewed 23 August 2015, .

Funnell, A. 2014, How far from 1984?, audio podcast, Future Tense, Radio National, ABC Radio, Sydney, 27 July, viewed 24 August 2015, .

Gans, J., Mann, S. 2015, ‘When the camera lies: our surveillance society needs a dose of integrity to be reliable’, The Conversation, viewed 20 August 2015, .

The Bourne Supremacy 2004, motion picture, Universal Studios, United States.

Yasmine Ghabbar

Big Data, Big Risk?

We live in an era where technology is advancing faster than ever before, with 2014 named as a landmark year for digital growth, the invasion of big data is only expected to grow (S Kemp 2015).

Big data allows technologies to challenge standard human behaviour and substitute it with new, innovative and exciting alternatives and possibilities (A Frank 2013). How ever, have you ever considered the potential dangers of big data, and the risks involved with giving people free access to the deepest, most personal and in some cases classified information? It is important to understand who has access to your data, how data can be shared and leaked and how it can be interpreted (R W Larsen 2014).

We Are Social’s new Digital, Social and Mobile in 2015 report shows that over 3 billion people out of a total of just over 7 billion people world wide are active internet users. That’s almost 50% of the world’s population! And just over 2 billion of those people have active social media accounts (S Kemp 2015).

(Simon Kemp 2015, Digital, Social & Mobile Worldwide in 2015, We are Social, London United Kingdom, viewed 26^th August 2015, <http://wearesocial.net/blog/2015/01/digital-social-mobile-worldwide-2015/>)

 

Facebook is responsible for more than half of those people connected to social media, with 1.23 billion users worldwide (M Ross 2014). It is important to understand that when we divulge our personal information including birthdays, photos, locations, emails, mobile numbers, friends etc. on social media sites like Facebook, that we are allowing said information to be shared, circulated and enter a field of communicative exchange (R Raley 2013). Internet scammers take advantage of the information and photographs you post online, send in texts and emails, to create a fake identity or target you with money stealing scams. In July 2015 there was 976 reports of identity thefts in Australia alone (Australian Competition & Consumer Commission 2015).

(Australian Competition & Consumer Commission 2015, Identity theft, Scam Watch, Australia, viewed 27^th August 2015, <https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/types-of-scams/attempts-to-gain-your-personal-information/identity-theft>)

 

Another risk associated with big data is the major lack of security in the data storage, as in the case of the 2010 WikiLeaks scandal (R W Larsen 2014). In this case disaffected US army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning allegedly copied a substantial amount of US government documents and sent them to WikiLeaks, an international non-profit organisation that publishes classified information (A Ezekiel, J Palfrey, J Zittrain 2012). This information included hundreds of thousands of classified military documents that were then shared with numerous newspapers and fell into public dispersal. This particular incident sparked an explosion of cyber attacks, online raids, conflicts and counter attacks surpassing the effects of prior high profile information leaks (A Ezekiel, J Palfrey, J Zittrain 2012).

The miss interpretation and poor use is another risk relating to big data with drastic consequences. Marissa Mayer, chief executive of Yahoo, is known to adopt the controversial system of stacked raking. This process aimed to promote diligence, separating the overachievers from the underachievers, although it quickly produced the complete opposite (K Kakaes 2015). Her method of Q.P.R.s (quarterly performance reviews), where managers were obligated to rank their meeting reports from 1 – 5, with at percentage of them forced to be placed at the bottom of the spectrum, regardless of whether that ranking was deserved. This inconsistent and unreliable use of data created increased competition, de-motivation and potentially cost people their employment based on arbitrary, biased data (M Nisen, 2015).

Big data creeps into every aspect of our lives, it is important to identify the different types of risks associated with it and how we can exercise safety protect ourselves from falling victim to its dark side.

 

REFERENCES:

Simon Kemp 2015, Digital, Social & Mobile Worldwide in 2015, We are Social, London United Kingdom, viewed 26^th August 2015, <http://wearesocial.net/blog/2015/01/digital-social-mobile-worldwide-2015/>

Adam Frank 2013, A Brave New World: Big Data’s Big Dangers, National Public Radio, viewed 27^th August 2015 <http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/06/10/190516689/a-brave-new-world-big-datas-big-dangers>

Rune Wreidt Larsen 2014, Researchers to reveal the dangers of ‘Big Data’, Science Nordic, Denmark, viewed 26^th August 2015, <http://sciencenordic.com/researchers-reveal-dangers-%E2%80%98big-data%E2%80%99>

Monique Ross 2014, Facebook turns 10: the world’s largest social network in numbers, ABC News, Australia, viewed 26^th August 2015, <http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-04/facebook-turns-10-the-social-network-in-numbers/5237128>

Raley, Rita. 2013, ‘Dataveillance and Countervailance,’ In Gitelman, L. (ed) “Raw Data” Is an Oxymoron, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, pp. 125

Australian Competition & Consumer Commission 2015, Identity theft, Scam Watch, Australia, viewed 27^th August 2015<https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/types-of-scams/attempts-to-gain-your-personal-information/identity-theft>

Alan Ezekiel, John Palfrey, Jonathan Zittrain 2012, The WikiLeaks Incident: Background, Details, and Resources, Harvard Law School, United States of America, viewed August 27^th 2015,<http://casestudies.law.harvard.edu/the-wikileaks-incident-background-details-and-resources/>

Konstantin Kakaes 2015, The big dangers of ‘big data’, CNN, London United Kingdom, viewed 26^th August 2015, <http://edition.cnn.com/2015/02/02/opinion/kakaes-big-data/>

Max Nisen, 2015, Marissa Mayer’s Yahoo is a case study in the toxic nature of stack ranking, Quartz, viewed 27^th August 2015,<http://qz.com/320532/marissa-mayers-yahoo-is-a-case-study-in-the-toxic-nature-of-stack-ranking/>

 

Nicole Jedelsky

 

 

 

 

 

 

Social Media in Relation to Big Data

Here we are in the 21st century, surrounded by technology and all it has to offer. The Internet, one of technology’s biggest breakthroughs of the late 1960s [Internet Society, 2012], has enabled us to connect and communicate with the rest of the world; a concept that once seemed so impossible. This revolutionised form of connectivity comes about through social media, branching off into forums, blogs and social networks.

Connecting online is fast, easy and addictive. It is so readily available and easy to access that it’s nearly impossible not to incorporate frequent use of it into our lives. Checking your phone for text messages, scrolling through the endless news feed on Facebook, showing off photos of your overpriced gourmet lunches on Instagram, and expressing your anger toward public transport on Twitter. These are tasks that a large percentage of society have embraced and added to their daily, or perhaps, hourly routines. We’ve reached the point where it’s considered normal to be so involved with this “integral part of life online” [Rouse, 2015].

In Noah [2013], a short film from the Toronto International Film Festival, we are shown the impact that the Internet and social media has on our lives. There is a constant need to be online, even when you aren’t doing anything productive. The short film is set entirely on the screen of the main character’s computer, and depicts the flitting attention span of internet users and how there is a lack of true connection in our online lives.

This online life, the so-called “virtual-physical presence” [Raley, 2013], is something that all social media users have in common. The majority of these users attribute a high importance to their ‘virtual-physical presence’. But what is truly important is the impact on real life situations that constantly being online has, and how it has affected our social interactions. When we connect online we communicate constantly, concurrently, and compulsively, all of which are considered unconventional in terms of communication. The habitual nature of communicating via social media, has become ingrained in our subconscious, manifesting in our actions. The very act of this form of communication is, in itself, a disconnection from reality.

Everything that we do online, all the videos we watch on YouTube, all the articles we read and share, and all the “friends” we have on social networking sites, this is what forms our online life and online identity. It is a compilation of all of our personal data being made available to the world with a few clicks of a mouse. What we don’t realise is that corporations “collect and aggregate personal data to the extent that each individual can be easily monitored, managed and hence controlled,” [Raley, 2013]. Every time we log onto Facebook and “like” the funny article shared onto our page, we’re feeding these companies more and more information for free. We are “voluntarily surrendering personal information [which] becomes the means by which social relations are established and collective entities supported,” [Raley, 2013].

The personal data from our virtual-physical presence adds to what is known as ‘Big Data.’ ‘Big Data refers to technologies and initiatives that involve data that is too diverse, fast-changing or massive for conventional technologies,” [Mongo, 2015]. It is important to understand the concept of ‘Big Data’ as it “changes the definition of knowledge and how we generate knowledge. It creates a radical shift in the way we think,” [Kasunic, 2015]. What we need to consider is that “data does not just exist, it has to be ‘generated’,” [Manovich, 2001]. Social media is a primary source contributing to the generating of ‘Big Data’ that corporations use to make billions of dollars, and we are the ones that are responsible for making that source available.

REFERENCES:

Brief History of the Internet, 2012, Internet Society, viewed 27 August 2015, <http://www.internetsociety.org/brief-history-internet>

Kasunic, J. L. 2015, ‘Data, data, everywhere’, UTS Online Subject 85202, lecture notes, UTS, Sydney, viewed 21 August 2015, <https://uts-web1.echo360.net/echocontent/1534/5/99486a8f-731b-4925-aa9c-9d8db38eeefc/audio.mp3?download>

Manovich, L. 2001, ‘The Database Logic’, The Language of New Media, Cambridge MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachussets.

Mongo DB, 2015, Mongo DB Inc, viewed 27 August 2015, <https://www.mongodb.com/big-data-explained&gt;

Noah, 2013, motion picture, Ryerson University, Toronto, available at <http://www.fastcocreate.com/3017108/you-need-to-see-this-17-minute-film-set-entirely-on-a-teens-computer-screen&gt;

Raley, R. 2013, ‘Dataveillance and Countervaillance’, in Gitelman, L. “Raw” Data Is an Oxymoron, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Rouse, M. 2015, Social Media, viewed 27 August 2015, <http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/social-media>

Donna Dumas