Download Sample Student Sample Professor Jeffrey Eagan English B1A T/TR

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Student Sample
Professor Jeffrey Eagan
English B1A T/TR
18 October 2016
Data Mining and the Role a Lack of Privacy Plays
The world that we find ourselves living in today is a lot different from the one that a
person’s grandparents were raised in during the 1940s and 1950s. In those decades, speaking to
the state of mind in that time period, there was right and wrong, there was black and then there
was white; gray was a very seldom ever needed nor seen color. The lines between right and
wrong, between reality and fantasy, and between invasion and protection were not as blurred in
that time period as it tends to be in today’s ever changing age. The age of blind trust that
generation was raised in is long over; instead, the world has been inhabited with this gray
mindset and humans, more specifically Americans, are raised with a cynicism about the world
that was not seen in the previous generations. With the age of cynicism in full force and the lines
becoming even more distorted, defining abstract words and trying to find their meaning can
prove difficult. Privacy is an issue that is not only plaguing the citizens of America, but in large
is affecting the entire world as well. To go out and attempt to define a word such as privacy is a
monumental challenge because privacy can mean different things to different people. The
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines privacy as, “freedom from unauthorized intrusion.” At what
point does an individual’s freedom end and instead societal protection as a whole trump all, more
so, is there even privacy, in today’s society? The government and big business’ interest in the
individual has been multiplying exponentially since 9/11. The government chooses to invade the
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individual in the name of safety and liberty to protect the nation from enemies both foreign and
domestic; while the business sector invades in the name of ease and convenience. Through the
use of technology and data mining, the government and big business can know more about a
person than their own family does. For example, take the father who found out his daughter was
pregnant because Target kept sending him coupon offers about pregnancy, this example is just a
small effect data mining can have on the world. This invasion of privacy by both the government
and the business sector is alarming. While the touted benefits of these invasions include
increased protection as well as convenience to the consumer, these methods are still highly
controversial. If handled carefully and respectfully, which in theory is possible but not probable,
individuals could enjoy the benefits without such an emphasis on the negatives that surround
data mining.
Data mining is used by the government and businesses for either protection or for
economic reasons. When talking about data mining a word that will appear is big data. The book
Privacy in the Age of Big Data defines big data as, “the practice of companies collecting millions
of facts about customers and using those facts to predict trends and develop better sales and
marketing strategies”(Payton and Claypoole 7). In today’s fast paced society we are focused on
being as transparent as possible and being connected at all times through social media. The
amount of information that individuals choose to share with the entire world can be shocking:
from where they are, to what they are doing, who they are with, and never mind controversial
posts that could put that person in both legal trouble now and jeopardize future employment
opportunities. Garret Keizer in Privacy touches this subject of sharing by saying that it is sad we
share more about ourselves than we share our money (1). Keizer goes on by sharing some
statistics about data mining by corporations in 2012, and the relationship they have with the
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government by citing that, “Verizon alone receives 90,000 demands for information from law
enforcement agencies every year…The National Security Agency intercepts 1.7 billion e-mails
every day…corporations mine our e-mails and Internet searches in the hopes of honing their
marketing strategies” (6). The amount of information that was amassed in 2012 was shocking
however, in Verizon’s published Transparency Report, which can be found on their website, it
states that in the first half of 2016 that there was 135,786 demands by law enforcement for
customer data in the United States (1).
The amount of personal information that is being openly shared by individuals and then
that data being retrieved by corporations and the government is due solely on the reliance and
readily ease of access to technology. While the world is becoming more technologically
advanced every day and the few shreds of privacy a person has left is being challenged it is still
quite a far reach away from the dystopian world that Aldous Huxley writes about in his book
Brave New World. There are similarities between the fictional world he wrote about in 1931 and
the world that we are living in today. The strongest tie between today’s society and Huxley’s
society is in relation to instant gratification, entertainment, and drugs to cause that individual to
not worry. While Huxley’s citizens drug of choice was Soma, our drug of choice is technology,
think just how often a person is looking down at their phone during the day becoming ever more
oblivious to the world around them. The drug we choose is technology to fill our time.
Technology is what the government and businesses use to mine data about us, there is no chance
this is a coincidence; together the government and business world is either really smart or while
being distracted we let our privacy be taken away. There was a time when citizens gave up their
right to privacy for either the sake of ease and convenience, lack of caring, or being too
distracted with what the world used to keep us oblivious from what is really happening.
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The most frightening part of big data and data mining is its ability to store all of the data
for as long as it needs to. Keizer talks about the longevity of technology by saying, “It is a
curious paradox of the times we live in, when no commandment is inscribed on tablets of stone
but every one of our transgressions lives eternally within some data bank, effectively beyond the
pale of forgiveness”(6). Christian Rudder in Dataclysm tells us that the job of the computer is to
remember, it does not need to do anything else, to remember everything that an individual has
done and store it. He says, “What I’ve just described…is what sociologists call longitudinal
data…We don’t have these capabilities quite yet because the Internet…is still too young…we’re
building toward” (32). What an individual decided to post five years ago in a time of lapsed
judgment or of youthful stupidity should not haunt them for the rest of their days. We however
no longer live in the age of privacy. The acknowledgment that privacy has changed, if not died
out completely, is needed to be understood when looking towards the future of data mining and
big data. This perception that we have privacy is an outdated archaic belief. Once the privacy
moves from the consumer to big business, once it moves away from the individual to the
government it is extremely difficult if not impossible for it to be retrieved. For example if every
citizen or consumer in America, which would not happen, were to get angry and protest for
privacy to be returned and all surveillance and data collection to cease, both the government and
businesses would agree to stop but would still continue to do it all behind the citizens and
consumers backs. The reason it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for privacy to be
returned to where it once was is because the little bit of privacy citizens and consumers get back,
four fold of it is being taken away by new means via new bills passed by the government. The
topic of data mining is a really large subject to attempt to tackle, Keizer does in fact touch on
data mining and the economic effects it has in a society saying it turns humans into a product
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making some of us worth more or less than another creating an even larger gap between the rich
and poor.
The negatives that surround big data and data mining will continue to be felt. From mass
government collections of user’s data by working with corporations, data being stored forever,
the human races need for technology, and the decaying notion of privacy the issues that plague
people’s minds about data mining will continue. However, just like any new technology it takes
time to work out the issues and make it beneficial to all. While there are a lot of negatives to data
mining there are some benefits that, when the negatives are handled accordingly, could pose a
great asset to society as a whole. From helping provide even more convenience to medically
being able to determine if you are suffering from something you may not know about, the
benefits of data mining are there; however, until society as a whole feels like data mining will
not be used to take advantage of them via the government and big business the negative stigma
that surrounds that practice will still be there. With the age of privacy dying, if not dead
completely, do we even have a choice in this matter or is it too late now? Data mining is the next
industry to boom, unlike in the past where a service or a specific product was what was valued it
is now a person’s information. It is important to be careful what a person chooses to put online
because once it’s out there you cannot get it back. So how much are you worth?
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Works Cited
“Privacy.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/privacy.
“Transparency Report.” Verizon, 2016, http://www.verizon.com/about/portal/transparencyreport/us-report/.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. Harper Perennial, 2006
Keizer, Garret. Privacy. New York, Picador, 2012.
Payton, Theresa et al. Privacy in the Age of Big Data: Recognizing Threats, Defending Your
Rights, and Protecting Your Family. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Rudder, Christian. Dataclysm: Who We Are When We Think No One's Looking. Crown
Publishers, 2014.