NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] In Defense (Ouch!) of Facebook's Data Deal with Politico
In Defense (Ouch!) of Facebook's Data Deal with Politico
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000929.html
Regular readers know that I am not a fan of Facebook. I've long been
(and continue to be) a critic of their privacy practices and related
implementations. I don't actively participate in Facebook, other than
with an essentially empty account providing me with access to inspect
the various user interfaces and interactions.
So it's with a bit of irony that I find myself in the position of
having to come out in support of Facebook, in response to a torrent of
complaints about their initiative to analyze the political sentiments
of Facebook users in conjunction with Politico ( http://j.mp/wvG8hl [ZDNET] ).
The project involves an automated system to scan Facebook posts and
comments for politically-related text, analyze the resulting data, and
derive an overall look at Facebook users' sentiments on this topic,
which given the size of Facebook's user community could potentially
provide important new insights.
But I've been inundated with people upset that Facebook is "reading
their private messages" and so supposedly horribly violating their
privacy.
I'm sorry, I just don't see it that way.
I have a maxim that I've used as a guide for many, many years. It's
very simple.
"Choose your battles carefully."
I don't claim to have the military insight of Sun Tzu, but this simple
idea has served me fairly well.
And in this particular Facebook case, we shouldn't even be thinking of
a battle at all, because there is no demonstrable vector for damage to
any Facebook users through the anonymous, automated statistical
process as described, and there is the potential for significant
knowledge benefits to society from the results.
We're at a crossroads where it is now obvious that simply throwing
away the vast and rapidly increasing amount of data being generated by
our lives, without first considering the responsible derivation of
useful knowledge from that data, is like flushing a natural resource
down the toilet.
Obviously, there is much data that shouldn't be kept in its raw form
forever, to help protect against the possibility of retroactive abuse
by governments or others. That's why I've applauded the now fairly
standard practice of scheduled data anonymization and deletion by
major search engines and other services for user search query and
other data, for example.
On the other hand, to argue that it should be forbidden to derive
useful knowledge from data in ways that protect individual users'
privacy but still allow for aggregate analysis, would be incredibly
wasteful.
A classic example is health care. We all want our individual
health-related activities to be kept private. But without some
mechanism for the aggregate sharing and analysis of healthcare data,
it would be impossible to reasonably recognize and understand trends
in disease, diagnostics, and treatment. Epidemics and pandemics would
be far harder to spot early on, and to potentially control. Real
lives are at stake.
In our everyday world, all manner of activity data is subjected to
various forms of aggregated analysis and often publication. Phone
companies and ISPs watch calling and traffic. Credit card companies
and banks explore transaction patterns in great detail, as do stores
with "loyalty card" systems.
Internet messages are scanned by automated systems for anti-spam,
anti-phishing purposes, and for ad displays. Search trends are
derived from user search queries.
And so on. There is usually nothing nightmarish about these systems,
so long as individual users' data is protected. And the benefits of
the knowledge derived from such data can be very important. Not only
do they serve to keep even incredibly sophisticated Internet services
free to most users, but the health, safety, and other realms of
aggregate statistical information can serve critical public needs.
So like I said, choose your battles carefully. There are enough true
privacy problems to keep us busy into the dim future. Wasting time,
effort, and emotion on useful anonymous data analysis like Facebook's
Politico project just doesn't make sense.
Even if you don't like Facebook.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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