Big Data, Big Issues

The Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust Law recently held a public hearing with the CEOs of America's largest tech companies. I summarize my thoughts on the investigation, their questions, and the responses from the CEOs Bezos, Zuckerburg, Pichai, and Cook.

Pandemics force us to grapple with many difficult ethical questions. As professionals in the big data and software industries, we need to ask ourselves how our work might be utilized to reduce the spread of disease. Surveillance plays a key role in software systems designed in response to pandemics. The ability to quickly identify and quarantine affected individuals is priceless to containing the coronavirus COVID-19.

China's surveillance apparatus is a leading case-study for such a response. In this episode, we discuss its effectiveness, what other responses might work, and if such a system could be effective in other countries.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act establishes the authority of federal agencies like the FBI, CIA, and NSA to spy on international targets. Big data technology creates tremendous power for effective intelligence, and is critical to maintain strategic advantage geopolitcally. US citizens today worry that the authorities established under FISA are too broad, and that its court system, intelligence officials, and agents are not subject to proper scrutiny. Officials in the intelligence community argue that secrecy is critical to the effectiveness of the programs, and that internal regulations are followed and respected throughout the process. They also point out that these systems are used only on foreign targets of value - not against US citizens.

The third installment of a three part series covering Shoshana Zuboff's book "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism." Here, we focus on the way Zuboff describes the worldview of big data's most powerful figures. We mention the key figure in her book named Alex Pentland. We also take a brief visit to Peter Joesph's book "The New Human Rights Movement" and compare his economic vision with Pentland's techno-utopia.

The Russian Internet Research Agency, known for 2016 United States election interference, had ambitions beyond the election of President Donald Trump. Their cybercriminal activity was designed to sow seeds of discontent within the American public, radicalizing both conservatives and liberals through a social media troll campaign. Using social networks, Putin and his operatives have successfully pushed the right and left further apart using personalized messaging, antagonizing Americans toward hating one another and losing faith in their democracy. Clear legal standards are needed to ensure private corporations will work with federal investigators to put an end to foreign operations on social media platforms.

What do corporations do with all that data they collect about us, and why does it make them powerful? To answer this question, we focus on Shoshana Zuboff's 2019 book: "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism", specifically on the rise of corporate power through instrumentarianism.

Welcome to the fourth episode of Big Data, Big Issues. Today, we will be introducing the concept of "surveillance capitalism" by discussing key concepts from a book by Shoshana Zuboff. The conversation is continued in episode 5. One might call this a book review, but it's more of an overview of the core arguments in the book.

Today we will continue talking about the Washington Privacy Act (WPA) which will hopefully be re-introduced in 2020. We will be discussing the shortcomings and solutions. This is a follow-up episode of Episode 2, where I summarized the goals of the Washington Privacy Act (WPA).

We discuss the Washington Privacy Act of 2019, which failed to pass and will hopefully be re-introduced in 2020. This episode provides an overview of the regulations proposed and a few reasons why it failed politically. The next episode will dive into its shortcomings and proposed solutions for the 2020 version.

We explore the argument that scientific progress will inevitably lead to the creation of "technologies of empowerment", giving countless individuals access to weapons which end in massive catastrophes. What is the role of surveillance, in this context?