It's over. Data in the hands of behemoths is done. They already ate all our snack puddings. No pretending we're virgins again.
My thinking is draconian & not nihilistic. I just don't know any way on earth besides borderline anarchy to mete out any real justice. I know the privacy situation won't get any better. There'll be judgements, laws, fines, peons & underlings going to jail. But behind the curtain it'll just get worse. For ME to think otherwise is just soft thinking.
I don't trust anything that has the words "a force for good" in the title. The article doesn't even address the real issue. Statistics on bicycle accidents is not the kind of intrusive privacy stealing data that everyone is concerned about. No one cared about it when they thought anonymous statistical usage data was being collected. FaceBook, Google Microsoft the rest went all out to link all that statistical data to the individuals real world identity, by sneaky underhanded and deceitful methods. Done without the users knowledge or consent by subverting the protocols and operating systems and applications everyone had got used to that they would provide unique identifiers and surreptitiously upload that data to them while masquerading as backup, update checks etc. That is where the line was crossed between the acceptable and unacceptable. If the guardian was worth a damn they would be calling for it to be made illegal for any data collecting agency to link the data they collect to any real world individual. That is ALL this is about and a 500 line article to try and obfuscate the real issue behind a smoke screen of "forces for good" will not change that fact one iota while psycholigical profiles are being created which can be accessed by lobbyists, pressure groups, employers, government agencies, credit agencies, banks the list is endless and will create a new class system based on personality scores and even that could be considered benign in comparison to what evil things those in positions of power will do to weaponize it.
The obvious great public good is in population level healthcare databases. In the UK, there was a prospect for that happening responsibly without commercial exploitation, give the excellent public National Health Service, and generally trustworthy doctors. However. The person (still) in charge of the NHS - Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt - was caught trying to effectively privatise this data and make it available for around £1 a person to the insurance companies. Woops. So that (rightly) stymied it. The other case that has scuppered this was a London hospital giving away healthcare data to Google DeepMind for "free". Hugely irresponsible and undervaluing the commercial data value, let alone the fact that the enormous public good of having this data set suitably partially anonomised would be fantastic for peoples' health. In my view, the irresponsible use of the data has and will kill people because it will now not happen for a long while. The prospect for giving Google data from publicly funded healthcare only for them to claim IP on it and charge huge rates downstream for it to be used, violated my Tos in a volcanic way.
I have no problem with the accumulation and use of anonymous statistical data. There is a huge gap in acceptability between that and the sneaky practice of trying to link that data to actual individuals which opens the door to a myriad of privacy and abuse issues.
