The Lazy Person's Guide To Internet Privacy
The Internet is an incredible tool, but it appeals to some of our worst tendencies: sloth, addiction, prurience. We love it because it's free, although of course, we're all paying a huge price. Even after debacles like Yahoo exposing the data of every single one of it's users, three billion in all, or the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal, how many people deleted any accounts, changed their privacy settings or read the epic and stultifying privacy agreements on social media? In the United States, what business theorist Shoshanna Zuboff terms "surveillance capitalism" was allowed to develop largely unregulated, allowing companies, in particular Google and Facebook, who rely on mining personal data for revenue to become, according to the New York Times, an "emerging duopoly that today controls more than half of the worldwide market in online advertising."
This spring, the European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation, a sweeping law that requires companies use the highest possible privacy settings and disclose any type of personal data they are collecting. In June, California followed suit with its own Consumer Internet Privacy Act of 2018, the most robust in the nation. And federal regulations? Remember back in 2017—I know that seems like the Dark Ages with the current breakneck news cycle—when President Trump signed a repeal of an Obama-era law which, under the FCC, would have required broadband companies to get permission from their customers when they were collecting "sensitive data" such as browsing history and geolocation? In late July, the Commerce Department "began holding stakeholder meetings to identify common ground and formulate core, high-level principles on data privacy," according to a senior official speaking to Reuters. In other words, don't hold your breath waiting for federal legislation.
Even California's law doesn't go into effect until 2020. What can you do right now to protect your privacy? Here are some steps you can complete in under an hour that will beef up your computer or phone's security:
1. Turn off location tracking for all of your Apps. You can turn them on selectively when you need them (such as with Uber).
2. Install automatic updates. This way your software will have the latest security features.
3. Cover your webcam with a piece of tape or post it like Mark Zuckerberg does. We know he's an expert on shady ways to collect personal information.
4. Use a password on every computer and gadget, not just your phone. And make it at least six characters long and strong. 123456 or your birthday will simply not do.
5. Put your social media accounts on lockdown. Check your privacy settings. Don't make everything public. Share only within a verifiable group of friends.
6. Avoid using public wifi connections. They can be convenient but the information you transmit is not secure.
7. Don't give away personal information that you don't have to. Phone number? Address? Birthdate? Nope. Facebook does not need to know.
8. Delete your search history regularly. This is critical if you use shared computers such as at school or in a library.
Consumer Reports has a useful list of nearly 70 other steps you can take to protect your security and privacy.
Big Data and Our Elections
That said, there is no hard evidence of collusion, but rather a string of awkward encounters by Trump's largely inexperienced, and frankly stupid, staff. The meat of Russia's "interference" came in the form of social media bots, fake accounts that would automatically repost sensationalist headlines to drum up support for Trump. These accounts are pretty easy to spot however, as they don't even come close to passing a turing test.
Blaming Russia is too easy
Still, the creation of Russia's bot army had to be predicated on some form of information, and many have accused Putin's government of tracking users' Facebook data in an attempt to gain a psychological understanding of the average American voter. This is where Aleksandr Kogan comes into play. Kogan sold the data of some 87 million Facebook users (collected via a quiz app) to Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm hired by the Trump campaign. Cambridge Analytica's goal was to create psychographic voting profiles. While there's no definitive connection between Cambridge Analytica and Russia, the precedent set by CA and their illegal exploitation of Facebook is a frightening one. If a private company is collecting data on citizens, it's a pretty safe bet that governments around the world are doing the same. While the Democratic Party's Russophobia is definitely a reaction to losing in 2016 more than anything else, but it accidentally shed light on an important issue: our data isn't safe, and with recent improvements AI and voice recognition software, we'll soon have the technology to not only create comprehensive individual psych profiles, but to tailor campaigns to individual voters.
Obviously companies like Google and Facebook have large stores of internal data, and they've certainly been amenable to selling it, but academic researchers (like Kogan) also have large data caches. Behavioral psychologists use Facebook in studies all the time, and the academic world isn't particularly well-known for its cyber security. Even in the event that these databases aren't hacked, there's nothing to prevent a researcher from selling their findings after their study is complete. The quick fix is to let Facebook block third parties from collecting data on its users, and for its part, Facebook has done just that. They've begun blocking apps from collecting information, and have also limited the number of researchers allowed to look at data on the site. Only academics researching political elections through the lens of social media are permitted to apply for access to Facebook's database.
Cambridge Analytica
At a glance, these robust safety measures are a breath of fresh air. It isn't often that a tech company is so committed to its customers' privacy. That said, when things look too good to be true, they usually are. If Facebook continues its path to prohibition, "only Facebook will really know very much about how Facebook actually operates and how people act on Facebook," warns Dr. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen of Oxford University. Sure, measures like these could protect data from outsiders, but it would also give a private company sole proprietorship over the most comprehensive database of human behaviors and tendencies ever created. Facebook would have even more sway over our local and national elections than it already does, and would gain a monopoly over 2 billion people's personal data. Essentially, Facebook could name its price. Because of the way the Internet works, there's no way to effectively protect our Facebook data without severely compromising our freedom. And even if we were to let Zuckerberg shut everyone out of Facebook's data vaults, this doesn't prevent other websites or services from collecting information on us. It doesn't make us any safer. Our sensitive information is freely available to anyone who knows how to access it.
As technology improves, it's going to become more and more difficult to tell what is and isn't fake news–whether or not that article you just read was an advertisement for Tide or some political campaign you weren't aware of. For better or worse, we've set out to map the entire spectrum of human behaviors. Eventually, marketing campaigns will be so advanced, so accurate in their mapping of our desires, we may forget that we ever had the capacity to think. Somewhere, the ghost of B.F. Skinner smiling.
Matt Clibanoff is a writer and editor based in New York City who covers music, politics, sports and pop culture. His editorial work can be found in Inked Magazine, Popdust, The Liberty Project, and All Things Go. His fiction has been published in Forth Magazine. -- Find Matt at his website and on Twitter: @mattclibanoff
The Dangers of Data in Education, Learner Profiles: The Good and The Bad
Academic tracking is the process of separating the highest achieving students and creating a tier system for classes based on students' aptitude in each subject. If classes in your high school were split up into honors, college prep, and general education segments, you grew up learning in this environment. Tracking itself is a controversial subject, with many calling it out as de facto segregation and saying that it negatively affects black and latino students. Whether or not this is true, is the subject of much debate. That said, tracking does disproportionately benefit the children who are high academic achievers, as resources are often diverted to AP and honors courses rather than their gen-ed counterparts.
The inclusion of data to help this tracking system operate, can be viewed either positively or negatively. It depends on your level of optimism. On the one hand, the use of data and individualized teaching practices could lead to the dissolution of tracking altogether, since it would be much easier to help struggling students reach their academic potential. On the other hand is... well, reality. Unfortunately, when theory turns to practice, students aren't all at the same level. They aren't all blank slates that can learn at the same rate. The problem presented by data-collection, particularly if it's coupled with an academic tracking system, is rigidity. With the use of learner profiles, it's possible to breakdown precisely, to the percentage point, what constitutes an honors student. How does this work for courses like English which are largely based on subjective essay grades? On top of this, data doesn't do a particularly good job of showing effort or desire to learn, both of which are integral to an honors environment. Too strong an emphasis on test scores and learner profiles could potentially take away from the human aspects of the teacher/student relationship.
Another prevalent issue regarding data collection is its permanence, as well as the legal precedence set by allowing schools to maintain databases on their students. Many parents are uncomfortable with the idea that their children's school might be keeping a personal file on them. From 2012 to 2014, there was a grassroots movement dedicated to fighting against project called InBloom, which aimed to profit from the release of student data. The idea was that no one other than students and educators should be allowed to access those records and that InBloom's mission was directly violating students' rights to privacy. Data shared within a school system can be dangerous because of its ability to shape teachers' opinions about students before they meet. If that data were given to the outside world, say to potential employers, it could be devastating for students trying to get jobs out of highschool. Not to mention the field day that advertisers and marketers would have if they were given access to students' personal data.
The question then remains; if there's a constant threat of dissemination and the advantages to data collection-while promising- aren't yet solidified, why do it? Even with hundreds of companies pledging to protect student privacy, the risk involved seems to significantly outweigh the reward. Many advocates of data collection argue that skeptics are allowing their fear to get the better of them, to the detriment of our public schools. But doesn't it make sense to be skeptical of a scenario in which educators can afford to collect data on students but school systems can't afford books and pencils? Data collection remains an interesting proposition, specifically with regard to personalized education, but until specific legislation is drawn up to combat potential abuse, it seems a bit too risky. It's not necessarily a luddite position to argue for the ability to measure student progress as an essential part of teaching. At the end of the day educators, not a collection of data points, are responsible for whether or not students succeed.
Matt Clibanoff is a writer and editor based in New York City who covers music, politics, sports and pop culture. His editorial work can be found in Inked Magazine, Pop Dust, The Liberty Project, and All Things Go. His fiction has been published in Forth Magazine. -- Find Matt at his website and on Twitter: @mattclibanoff