Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Your Facebook Data Will Never Be Safe
Unless you've been locked into a backyard bunker waiting for President Trump to start a nuclear war, you know that Facebook is having some rather serious problems with the confidentiality of its users' data. Data for some 50 million users somehow wound up in the hands of a UK data analysis firm called Cambridge Analytica, which then reportedly used it to assist Donald Trump get elected President of the United States. Needless to say, the 50 or so million users weren't aware this happened. Government investigations have started. A search warrant was executed at Cambridge Analytica and calls have been made for Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, to testify before Congress. But, no matter what happens--Facebook takes more protective measures, government regulation increases, people are tossed in jail--your Facebook data will never be safe.
According to an apocryphal story, bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks and replied, "Because that's where the money is." Facebook's problem is it is where the data is. Facebook has the best data on the Internet. It insists on users using their true identities, and it operates a social forum, where it learns who is in a user's social circles, what they think, what they like, what they do, what they want, what they own, where they live, where they work, where they play, with whom they play, what illness and injuries they have, what medications they take, what treatments they get, what music they like, what television and video entertainment they like, where they go on vacation and with whom, what they eat, where they eat, who they like, who they dislike, who they date, who they want to date, who they marry, who they divorce, maybe even who they cheat on their spouses with, how they vote, who they vote for, why they vote a particular way, what their political views are, what their cultural values are, what their religious views are, where they worship, what prejudices and biases they have, what ethnic and racial groups they like or dislike, how they feel about gays, lesbians, transgender people or anyone else, how they feel about this sexual activity or that, etc., etc., etc., so on and so forth. In other words, Facebook knows AN AWFUL LOT about its users, more than any other website or Internet company.
Facebook is where the data is--the absolutely best data. That's why hackers, unscrupulous foreign governments, shady political operators, and all manner of scoundrels and riff raff will continue to swarm around Facebook like a pack of hyenas, snatching whatever data they can get. As we repeatedly learn just about every week, no repository of data is safe. Neither governments, military or intelligence organizations, the most sophisticated Internet companies, nor anyone else can keep data safe. Everyone who has valuable data has been hacked or probably will be hacked some day. The architecture of the Internet is open, not closed, and true security is simply impossible. Because Facebook has the crown jewels when it comes to data, the wolves will perennially attack and hack. And even as Facebook puts up more defenses, the jackals will relentlessly prowl and find new ways to slip through and feed.
Don't be naive when Facebook tells you they'll find ways to fix the problem. They've been hoodwinked before, and, being human, they'll be hoodwinked again. If you're on Facebook, you have a choice to make--have no expectation of privacy at all, or get the hell off of Facebook.
Monday, February 26, 2018
Are Conservatives More Gullible Than Liberals?
A recently released study from researchers at the University of Southern California found that, during the 2016 Presidential election, conservatives were about 31 times more likely to retweet Russian trolls than liberals. See https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/24/17047880/conservatives-amplified-russian-trolls-more-often-than-liberals. Thus, Russian tweets favoring Donald Trump were far more likely to be amplified by retweeting than Russian tweets favor Hillary Clinton. Conservatives, the data shows, were more likely to be taken in by Russian fake news than liberals.
It's unclear why. Perhaps conservatives are more likely to be alarmed by the fear-inducing messages that the trolls tended to send. Or, liberals may tend to think more critically of what they read before accepting it. Perhaps both tendencies are factors, or maybe something else is operative. Whatever the case, anyone who participates in social media (i.e., all two billion or so of you) need to be cautious about accepting what you read. Facebook, Twitter, Google and other social media websites don't ensure you're reading the truth or anything even remotely close to the truth. They're starting to understand that acting as conduits for messages, however false, isn't a great business strategy because people will eventually tire of being fed falsehoods. And social media today is way too heavily laden with falsehoods. People will eventually go to other websites that more rigorously screen the information they display. Traditional news services may win in the end.
By all indications, the measures being taken by Facebook, Twitter, Google and other social media websites to combat fake news are inadequate. Russian bots flooded Twitter with pro-gun messages after the recent shootings at Marjorie Douglas Stoneham High School in Broward County, Florida. See https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/16/us/russian-bots-florida-shooting-intl/index.html. No doubt they tried similar measures in other social media sites. Don't rely on social media for the truth. Be cautious. Be skeptical. You won't win a political debate by pushing messages from Russian trolls. Truth will prevail in the end---and that means if you buy into messages from Russian trolls, you'll lose.
It's unclear why. Perhaps conservatives are more likely to be alarmed by the fear-inducing messages that the trolls tended to send. Or, liberals may tend to think more critically of what they read before accepting it. Perhaps both tendencies are factors, or maybe something else is operative. Whatever the case, anyone who participates in social media (i.e., all two billion or so of you) need to be cautious about accepting what you read. Facebook, Twitter, Google and other social media websites don't ensure you're reading the truth or anything even remotely close to the truth. They're starting to understand that acting as conduits for messages, however false, isn't a great business strategy because people will eventually tire of being fed falsehoods. And social media today is way too heavily laden with falsehoods. People will eventually go to other websites that more rigorously screen the information they display. Traditional news services may win in the end.
By all indications, the measures being taken by Facebook, Twitter, Google and other social media websites to combat fake news are inadequate. Russian bots flooded Twitter with pro-gun messages after the recent shootings at Marjorie Douglas Stoneham High School in Broward County, Florida. See https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/16/us/russian-bots-florida-shooting-intl/index.html. No doubt they tried similar measures in other social media sites. Don't rely on social media for the truth. Be cautious. Be skeptical. You won't win a political debate by pushing messages from Russian trolls. Truth will prevail in the end---and that means if you buy into messages from Russian trolls, you'll lose.
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Why North Korea Can't Afford to Nuke America
Despite all the noise Kim Jong Un is making about nuking America, he can't afford to do it. That's not simply because of the doctrine of mutually assured destruction and his inability to touch America's Trident submarines, any one of which could obliterate North Korea. It's also because he'd target North Korea if he tried to hit America.
Recent news reports indicate that North Korea has ballistic missiles that either can or soon will be able to reach Washington, D.C. The nation's capital would naturally be a primary target for Kim's missiles, and he'd no doubt put his most powerful nukes on the missiles headed for DC. Those missiles, if they actually succeeded in reaching their target, would likely cause a lot of damage in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington. The damage could come either from explosive blast or from electromagnetic pulse (EMP), or both.
Somewhere around 70% of the world's Internet traffic flows through servers located in northern Virginia (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/data-centers-boom-in-loudoun-county-but-jobs-arent-following/2014/01/17/b4a704c8-7f0e-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html?utm_term=.181c4b46bfa0). The effects of the blast and the EMP could knock out a large portion of those servers and the infrastructure in which they operate. The Internet could promptly become one gigantic, intractable traffic jam.
North Korea is about as isolated as any country in the world. One of its main connections to the outside world is through the Internet. The Internet is a crucial tool for North Korea, to steal money, do business (often illicit), to spy on other people, and to find out the truth (the problem with purveying fake news is that you still have to know the truth or the truth will sooner or later smack you up one side and down the other). Without the Internet, North Korea would have to rely largely on its own internal resources. And those aren't sufficient even to feed its own population a nutritionally adequate diet, let alone provide a decent standard of living.
So if North Korea nukes America, it loses its Internet connection. And these days, that's almost the worst thing that can happen.
Recent news reports indicate that North Korea has ballistic missiles that either can or soon will be able to reach Washington, D.C. The nation's capital would naturally be a primary target for Kim's missiles, and he'd no doubt put his most powerful nukes on the missiles headed for DC. Those missiles, if they actually succeeded in reaching their target, would likely cause a lot of damage in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington. The damage could come either from explosive blast or from electromagnetic pulse (EMP), or both.
Somewhere around 70% of the world's Internet traffic flows through servers located in northern Virginia (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/data-centers-boom-in-loudoun-county-but-jobs-arent-following/2014/01/17/b4a704c8-7f0e-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html?utm_term=.181c4b46bfa0). The effects of the blast and the EMP could knock out a large portion of those servers and the infrastructure in which they operate. The Internet could promptly become one gigantic, intractable traffic jam.
North Korea is about as isolated as any country in the world. One of its main connections to the outside world is through the Internet. The Internet is a crucial tool for North Korea, to steal money, do business (often illicit), to spy on other people, and to find out the truth (the problem with purveying fake news is that you still have to know the truth or the truth will sooner or later smack you up one side and down the other). Without the Internet, North Korea would have to rely largely on its own internal resources. And those aren't sufficient even to feed its own population a nutritionally adequate diet, let alone provide a decent standard of living.
So if North Korea nukes America, it loses its Internet connection. And these days, that's almost the worst thing that can happen.
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Does the Internet Hamper Economic Growth?
The sharing economy--Uber, Airbnb, Zipcar, bike sharing and so on--makes more efficient use of resources. Cars that might sit around are instead used more often. Living space that might remain empty provides accommodation. People don't have to buy a bike any more. They can just rent the short term use of one.
But does all this sharing hinder economic growth? If people use cars, bikes, homes and other things more efficiently, fewer of these items need to be produced and sold. Manufacturers may see decreased demand. Jobs may be lost. Growth could slacken. The country's tax base might stagnate, just at a time when increased government funding is sought for everything from national defense and security to infrastructure repair and expansion to Social Security and Medicare.
Gig-based employment could have similar implications. People who work short term gigs tend to earn less than full-time employees, reducing their ability to contribute to the consumer demand that comprises 70% of America's economy. Employers have little or no incentive to improve the abilities and productivity of gig employees, so improvements in worker productivity could be hampered. Without productivity growth, we won't have long term gains in employee compensation or national wealth. Gig employees may be unable to save significantly for retirement, which would place more of the burden of their golden years on public funding. These increased tax burdens could further impair growth. As gig-based employment grows, so would these problems.
The Internet greatly enhances globalization. Customer support centers in Third World countries can inexpensively serve the needs of corporations in the industrialized world. All manner of services, from manufacturing to radiology to routine legal work, can be cheaply coordinated and/or delivered from distant, low wage places over the Internet. Workers in America who provided those services are out of luck.
The Internet provides the communications process that allows the sharing economy, gig-based employment, and globalization of services, to operate. But greater micro-economic efficiencies such as these may have negative macro-economic implications. One of the great mysteries of modern economics is why the economy is growing so slowly. Increased efficiency creates losers as well as winners. Those losses will have aggregate impact eventually, when they grow large enough.
The Internet is an astonishingly effective conveyor of information. But, as regards the sharing economy, gig-based employment, and globalization, owners of assets, holders of capital, and employers benefit more than employees--except employees willing to work for lower wages The Internet may have enhanced total global economic growth. But the distribution of that increased growth may well favor low wage countries, leaving industrialized nations with dimmer futures.
It's impossible to stop the march of technological advance. But the Internet is almost too effective in cutting costs and creating efficiencies. When artificial intelligence and robots have driven millions of people out of the labor force, leaving them penniless, economic stagnation may be more likely than prosperity. We had damn well better come up with a way to maintain social equilibrium in such a circumstance, or the political insurgencies of today will seem like gentle summer breezes.
But does all this sharing hinder economic growth? If people use cars, bikes, homes and other things more efficiently, fewer of these items need to be produced and sold. Manufacturers may see decreased demand. Jobs may be lost. Growth could slacken. The country's tax base might stagnate, just at a time when increased government funding is sought for everything from national defense and security to infrastructure repair and expansion to Social Security and Medicare.
Gig-based employment could have similar implications. People who work short term gigs tend to earn less than full-time employees, reducing their ability to contribute to the consumer demand that comprises 70% of America's economy. Employers have little or no incentive to improve the abilities and productivity of gig employees, so improvements in worker productivity could be hampered. Without productivity growth, we won't have long term gains in employee compensation or national wealth. Gig employees may be unable to save significantly for retirement, which would place more of the burden of their golden years on public funding. These increased tax burdens could further impair growth. As gig-based employment grows, so would these problems.
The Internet greatly enhances globalization. Customer support centers in Third World countries can inexpensively serve the needs of corporations in the industrialized world. All manner of services, from manufacturing to radiology to routine legal work, can be cheaply coordinated and/or delivered from distant, low wage places over the Internet. Workers in America who provided those services are out of luck.
The Internet provides the communications process that allows the sharing economy, gig-based employment, and globalization of services, to operate. But greater micro-economic efficiencies such as these may have negative macro-economic implications. One of the great mysteries of modern economics is why the economy is growing so slowly. Increased efficiency creates losers as well as winners. Those losses will have aggregate impact eventually, when they grow large enough.
The Internet is an astonishingly effective conveyor of information. But, as regards the sharing economy, gig-based employment, and globalization, owners of assets, holders of capital, and employers benefit more than employees--except employees willing to work for lower wages The Internet may have enhanced total global economic growth. But the distribution of that increased growth may well favor low wage countries, leaving industrialized nations with dimmer futures.
It's impossible to stop the march of technological advance. But the Internet is almost too effective in cutting costs and creating efficiencies. When artificial intelligence and robots have driven millions of people out of the labor force, leaving them penniless, economic stagnation may be more likely than prosperity. We had damn well better come up with a way to maintain social equilibrium in such a circumstance, or the political insurgencies of today will seem like gentle summer breezes.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
The EU Bubble
Today's kerfluffle in the stock markets over the debt default of an entity affiliated with Portugal's largest bank reminds us that if there is a financial bubble anywhere, it's in EU sovereign and bank debt. EU sovereign debt and the debt of EU banks have become almost synonymous. That's because they are linked by a problematic circularity. EU banks have invested heavily in EU sovereign debt. EU nations, in turn, have pretty much become the guarantors of the debts of their banks. Thus, the banks borrow to invest in sovereign debt, and the sovereigns in turn guarantee the banks' debt that funds the sovereigns. It's rather clever, as long as nothing goes wrong.
However, one could note that EU banks and sovereign nations appear to be burdened with each others' liabilities, and that the guarantees of EU nations accordingly have limited efficacy. Given that the EU and its banks, in toto, can be reasonably described as overleveraged, this circularity can become a circular firing squad if there is a run on a major EU bank or an EU sovereign member nation. This is particularly so since no EU nation can issue its own currency and pay its or its banks' debts with printed money.
Of course, the European Central Bank has in recent years made a show of pointing to shining armor it could don and white horses it could mount to ride to the rescue if there is another European financial crisis. And it has adopted accommodative, money printing-like maneuvers when the going got tough (like letting EU banks use sovereign debt as collateral for borrowings at the ECB without any discounting of their face value). If the dustup across the pond is limited to Portugal, the ECB should be able to find one way or another to keep the cookie from crumbling. But if other EU nations, particularly larger ones like France, begin to waver, the EU financial bubble could burst in a nasty way. The economic consequences could be bad. Given the growing extremism in Europe, the political consequences could be worse.
There are some asset classes in the U.S. that may be getting bubbly. Many Internet stocks are suspect. Housing except for the $1 million and up price range seems to be struggling. In addition, small cap stocks haven't been doing well recently and may turn out to be a bubble bursting. But it's unlikely that the frothiness of these asset classes could re-trigger the Great Recession. On the other hand, if the EU sovereign nations can't keep their banking systems on an even keel, then all bets are off.
However, one could note that EU banks and sovereign nations appear to be burdened with each others' liabilities, and that the guarantees of EU nations accordingly have limited efficacy. Given that the EU and its banks, in toto, can be reasonably described as overleveraged, this circularity can become a circular firing squad if there is a run on a major EU bank or an EU sovereign member nation. This is particularly so since no EU nation can issue its own currency and pay its or its banks' debts with printed money.
Of course, the European Central Bank has in recent years made a show of pointing to shining armor it could don and white horses it could mount to ride to the rescue if there is another European financial crisis. And it has adopted accommodative, money printing-like maneuvers when the going got tough (like letting EU banks use sovereign debt as collateral for borrowings at the ECB without any discounting of their face value). If the dustup across the pond is limited to Portugal, the ECB should be able to find one way or another to keep the cookie from crumbling. But if other EU nations, particularly larger ones like France, begin to waver, the EU financial bubble could burst in a nasty way. The economic consequences could be bad. Given the growing extremism in Europe, the political consequences could be worse.
There are some asset classes in the U.S. that may be getting bubbly. Many Internet stocks are suspect. Housing except for the $1 million and up price range seems to be struggling. In addition, small cap stocks haven't been doing well recently and may turn out to be a bubble bursting. But it's unlikely that the frothiness of these asset classes could re-trigger the Great Recession. On the other hand, if the EU sovereign nations can't keep their banking systems on an even keel, then all bets are off.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
The WhatsApp Deal: Did Zuckerberg Just Blink?
WhatsApp is the antithesis of Facebook. It doesn't collect personal information. Messages aren't stored in WhatsApp's servers. There are no ads on WhatsApp. As a messaging service, there's nothing on WhatsApp for strangers (or parents) to find via search engines. It offers the one thing that's almost impossible to obtain on the Internet: privacy. No wonder it's growing by a million users a day, many of them in the young adult cohort coveted by commercial websites.
It's unclear what Mark Zuckerberg hopes to achieve by having Facebook buy WhatsApp. If he engrafts WhatsApp onto Facebook, or makes it semi-clone of Facebook (i.e., has it run ads), it will surely lose much of the privacy it offers. Facebook's business model, after all, is to vacuum up as much personal information as possible in order to cram advertising into users' faces. But that could drain away much of WhatsApp's attractiveness to its current user base, and they could easily flee to any of a number of competitors offering private communications.
If Zuckerberg keeps WhatsApp independent, he'll have to find some way of generating revenue--a shipload of it, since Facebook is paying $19 billion for WhatsApp and the only justification for such a Brobdingnagian price would be freight cars full of revenue. But you can't charge users much for instant messaging services (the phone companies tried that with text messaging and users are moving away from them). So there is a big question about what kind of rabbit Zuckerberg will pull out of the hat as a business strategy for WhatsApp.
One thing that seems apparent is that he's blinked. Zuckerberg evidently has come to realize that Facebook isn't going to be the platform for all users all the time. He's jumping onto one of the new, hot things on the Internet. Diversifying Facebook's corporate profile may be a prudent move. But the company now has two conflicting business models under its corporate roof, and it will have to sort out how to handle these conflicts. History does not suggest success is assured by any means. Microsoft entered various lines of business that were potential threats to its basic MS-DOS/Windows business--search engines, portals, mobile software, etc. It didn't managed them very well, because boosting a newer technology could mean undermining its cash cow. Newer, nimbler competitors, unburdened by these conflicts, ran circles around Microsoft. Facebook is one of them. But now it has taken in-house a conflict between the old (yes, Facebook is getting old) and the new on the Internet. How Facebook handles that conflict could dictate the future arc of its growth.
It's unclear what Mark Zuckerberg hopes to achieve by having Facebook buy WhatsApp. If he engrafts WhatsApp onto Facebook, or makes it semi-clone of Facebook (i.e., has it run ads), it will surely lose much of the privacy it offers. Facebook's business model, after all, is to vacuum up as much personal information as possible in order to cram advertising into users' faces. But that could drain away much of WhatsApp's attractiveness to its current user base, and they could easily flee to any of a number of competitors offering private communications.
If Zuckerberg keeps WhatsApp independent, he'll have to find some way of generating revenue--a shipload of it, since Facebook is paying $19 billion for WhatsApp and the only justification for such a Brobdingnagian price would be freight cars full of revenue. But you can't charge users much for instant messaging services (the phone companies tried that with text messaging and users are moving away from them). So there is a big question about what kind of rabbit Zuckerberg will pull out of the hat as a business strategy for WhatsApp.
One thing that seems apparent is that he's blinked. Zuckerberg evidently has come to realize that Facebook isn't going to be the platform for all users all the time. He's jumping onto one of the new, hot things on the Internet. Diversifying Facebook's corporate profile may be a prudent move. But the company now has two conflicting business models under its corporate roof, and it will have to sort out how to handle these conflicts. History does not suggest success is assured by any means. Microsoft entered various lines of business that were potential threats to its basic MS-DOS/Windows business--search engines, portals, mobile software, etc. It didn't managed them very well, because boosting a newer technology could mean undermining its cash cow. Newer, nimbler competitors, unburdened by these conflicts, ran circles around Microsoft. Facebook is one of them. But now it has taken in-house a conflict between the old (yes, Facebook is getting old) and the new on the Internet. How Facebook handles that conflict could dictate the future arc of its growth.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Learning From the Data Scandals
It's obvious that there is too much data being stored, and the biggest problem is that even more data is being accumulated. The NSA scandal reveals what happens when a very large, secretive government agency with a big, but probably unverifiable budget decides it wants to know everything there is to know about everyone--it accumulates the Brobdingnagian pile of data that would allow it to do just that. And Edward Snowden's revelations prove that whoever you might be, even if you're the NSA, your data isn't secure.
The Target data hack shows what happens when a private sector organization accumulates massive amounts of valuable data--someone figures out how to get it. And much of the fallout falls on the most innocent of all--Target's customers.
These examples are only the beginning. By all indications, Google and Facebook want to gather and store all the data on the Internet about you for ever and ever, so they can sell it to the highest bidding advertiser closest to your GPS coordinates. But in accumulating these massive amounts of data, they make themselves tempting targets for hackers--and perhaps the NSA. Remember what Willie Sutton supposedly said when asked why he robbed banks: "Because that's where the money is." Wherever there is a big pile of data, someone will go after it. No person or organization has completely secure systems; not Google, not Facebook; not anyone. The value inhering in these huge databases will motivate somebody somewhere to put in the effort it takes to find the flaw.
How can we get this data based nightmare under control? By doing what banks do to limit the impact of robberies--keep less around. Banks generally keep only limited amounts of cash on hand. If they are robbed, the bad guys don't get that much. The damage is limited by the fact that there simply isn't a lot of cash to steal.
The same thing can be done with data. The big accumulators should be forced to stop hoarding. Private organizations like Google and Facebook should be allowed to hold most types of data for only short periods of time. For example, perhaps they could be allowed to keep location data for a few seconds. That would be long enough to sell an ad to the restaurant you're walking or driving by. But the data should not be added to a profile of you or other long term records that they could keep forever and forever so that it would be available for hackers to steal. Your web browsing activities could be similarly retained for just seconds, to accommodate the sale of advertising, but not to be incorporated into your profile or other long term records. Of course, information that you voluntarily post on your Facebook page or your blog could be retained for as long as you choose to keep it there (although you should be allowed to delete whatever you post and thereby prevent Facebook, Google or whoever from retaining it thereafter).
Even for data accumulated from sources other than the Internet--possibly much of Target's data was accumulated from activity of customers at bricks and mortars stores--could be subject to time limits on retention. Why does it matter who was buying what brand of diapers two years ago? Kids grow older and stop needing diapers, and the customer isn't going to buy any brand of diapers no matter how badly bombarded with advertising. And if a person stops by at a Target store a few times a year, would the store's extremely limited information about that person's buying habits really justify keeping information about the person? Why put that person at risk of being victimized by hackers when the store's knowledge of the person has little commercial value? The bottom line is much less information should be accumulated, and the justifications for keeping whatever is kept should be much stronger than they now are.
Some of the proposals for reform of the NSA reportedly take a similar approach. Data accumulation may be taken out of the hands of the NSA and placed with service providers or other third parties. While such non-NSA accumulations would present tempting targets for the bad guys, they could be spread out among more places (and therefore be more difficult to attack). In addition, time limits should be set on the retention of such data. Yes, any such time limits might make detection of terrorists and other bad guys harder. But there isn't much evidence that NSA's Big Gulp of data has detected a lot of terrorists anyway, so what we lose from time limits could be pretty theoretical.
Time limits on data retention would mean potentially big changes for the business models of some major companies. So be it. Our personal data and personal lives don't exist to serve the needs of soulless corporations. The surging appeal of SnapChat, with its limited half-life for posted photographs, shows that people want time limits on data about themselves. One of the most appealing aspects of American life is that you can re-invent yourself. No need to be weighed down by what you were years ago. And you shouldn't have to be weighed down by data stored by Internet or retailing giants years ago. Live free. Power to the Delete key. Death to personal data.
The Target data hack shows what happens when a private sector organization accumulates massive amounts of valuable data--someone figures out how to get it. And much of the fallout falls on the most innocent of all--Target's customers.
These examples are only the beginning. By all indications, Google and Facebook want to gather and store all the data on the Internet about you for ever and ever, so they can sell it to the highest bidding advertiser closest to your GPS coordinates. But in accumulating these massive amounts of data, they make themselves tempting targets for hackers--and perhaps the NSA. Remember what Willie Sutton supposedly said when asked why he robbed banks: "Because that's where the money is." Wherever there is a big pile of data, someone will go after it. No person or organization has completely secure systems; not Google, not Facebook; not anyone. The value inhering in these huge databases will motivate somebody somewhere to put in the effort it takes to find the flaw.
How can we get this data based nightmare under control? By doing what banks do to limit the impact of robberies--keep less around. Banks generally keep only limited amounts of cash on hand. If they are robbed, the bad guys don't get that much. The damage is limited by the fact that there simply isn't a lot of cash to steal.
The same thing can be done with data. The big accumulators should be forced to stop hoarding. Private organizations like Google and Facebook should be allowed to hold most types of data for only short periods of time. For example, perhaps they could be allowed to keep location data for a few seconds. That would be long enough to sell an ad to the restaurant you're walking or driving by. But the data should not be added to a profile of you or other long term records that they could keep forever and forever so that it would be available for hackers to steal. Your web browsing activities could be similarly retained for just seconds, to accommodate the sale of advertising, but not to be incorporated into your profile or other long term records. Of course, information that you voluntarily post on your Facebook page or your blog could be retained for as long as you choose to keep it there (although you should be allowed to delete whatever you post and thereby prevent Facebook, Google or whoever from retaining it thereafter).
Even for data accumulated from sources other than the Internet--possibly much of Target's data was accumulated from activity of customers at bricks and mortars stores--could be subject to time limits on retention. Why does it matter who was buying what brand of diapers two years ago? Kids grow older and stop needing diapers, and the customer isn't going to buy any brand of diapers no matter how badly bombarded with advertising. And if a person stops by at a Target store a few times a year, would the store's extremely limited information about that person's buying habits really justify keeping information about the person? Why put that person at risk of being victimized by hackers when the store's knowledge of the person has little commercial value? The bottom line is much less information should be accumulated, and the justifications for keeping whatever is kept should be much stronger than they now are.
Some of the proposals for reform of the NSA reportedly take a similar approach. Data accumulation may be taken out of the hands of the NSA and placed with service providers or other third parties. While such non-NSA accumulations would present tempting targets for the bad guys, they could be spread out among more places (and therefore be more difficult to attack). In addition, time limits should be set on the retention of such data. Yes, any such time limits might make detection of terrorists and other bad guys harder. But there isn't much evidence that NSA's Big Gulp of data has detected a lot of terrorists anyway, so what we lose from time limits could be pretty theoretical.
Time limits on data retention would mean potentially big changes for the business models of some major companies. So be it. Our personal data and personal lives don't exist to serve the needs of soulless corporations. The surging appeal of SnapChat, with its limited half-life for posted photographs, shows that people want time limits on data about themselves. One of the most appealing aspects of American life is that you can re-invent yourself. No need to be weighed down by what you were years ago. And you shouldn't have to be weighed down by data stored by Internet or retailing giants years ago. Live free. Power to the Delete key. Death to personal data.
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