The Growth of Big Data and its Effects on Society

Introduction

In the last 15 years, we have observed an increase in the amount of digital data available – from the Internet, social media, scientific equipment, surveillance cameras, smart phones, and many other sources – and in the computer technologies used to process it, which has led to the development of big data. The collection of these large and complex datasets which are difficult to process using traditional database management tools or data processing applications is called big data. Big data appears to be a topic that brings many benefits, but many problems and serious risks as well if it is misused or abused.

Big data is an evolving method of surveillance. A wide range of organizations – from finance to healthcare to law enforcement – have adopted big data analytics as a means to increase efficiency, improve prediction, and reduce bias. For example, companies can find out the products that are sold the most and produce products according to their analysis of customers' purchasing behaviour. By monitoring our every click, they are able to infer who we are and what types of merchandise we’re interested in to better identify sales opportunities and suggest other items we might want to buy and by this, it can get ahead of its competitors. Thus, they create value by optimizing their product mix and personalizing our shopping experience. Customer loyalty and satisfaction tends to trend well, and profits typically follow suit. Furthermore, such companies can find an ad you are most likely to click on based on your recently browsed articles.

Indeed, the systems that do this are automated, it is likely that no human looked at the data. However, you may not feel comfortable with the idea of that information bouncing around a tangle of companies and algorithms outside your control. This represents one of the serious problems that big data analytics brings. Thanks to all those data-collecting behemoths like Facebook, Google and Instagram or health-tracking apps. Consequently, people feel tracked by technology as they browse around the Web, make a purchase using a credit card, drive through a tollbooth. Moreover, as people have no control over the decisions of the algorithms and they don’t know how it operates, they could be unjustly treated and cannot appeal it, because the results cannot be explained and there is no transparency on how it works as the owners of the algorithm reject to give details.

According to the increase of data available that consists of personal information, privacy issues also could occur. As the commercial and government sites could share the confidential data they have for profit or other reasons or be hacked. Another crucial issue of big data analytics is that when certain data is used to make vital assessments which could influence someone’s life, people could resort to manipulate this data to turn it into their favor, which would lead to corruption. For instance, teachers are more likely to “teach to the exam,” or even to cheat if they are only evaluated based on their students’ exam grades. Now could you think of a system where every individual’s behaviour is monitored and evaluated as either positive or negative and indicated as a single value, based on rules constructed by the government, that may affect an individual's accessibility for a number of services that makes their lives easier.

Big Data Surveillance:

The Case of China’s social credit systemThe Chinese government is taking quick steps towards implementing the plan to create a nationwide system of mass surveillance of the entire population using big data.They attempt to promote “trustworthiness” in its economy and society by gathering massive amounts of data online using mass surveillance tools and big data analysis technology to monitor every action Chinese citizens perform, and then a score is generated for each citizen to evaluate their trustworthiness, based on social, commercial, political and legal credit. How frequently they pay their bills and who are in their social network are the typical behaviour of every citizen that will be monitored. The system will even be able to judge people based on the types of products purchased. For instance, if someone often buys diapers, will possibly be deemed as a responsible parent. On the other hand, if someone plays video games for more than 6 hours a day then this person might be considered as an inactive person, which would decrease his points. Moreover, the social interactions like posting online on the social media websites will also be traced and evaluated based on whether the posts are positive about the country’s politics, economy, social system. If so, the system will increase the citizen’s points. The interesting fact that the individual’s score can be altered not only by their own interaction or posts, but also by their friends’ and families’ interaction. This means that if any of their connections has negative interaction on the social media, this will also have a negative impact on their own score even if they didn’t take part in it.

Such a system would absolutely control the circle of your connections and what actions you perform. Therefore, all of these actions will be evaluated and given a score upon them, that represents the trustworthiness of the citizen that would be accessible by everyone. The consequences of showing any negative action or behaviour and violating trust, is a decrease in the one's score, which means he will be blacklisted and limited from all types of societal activities. This actually sounds worse than Orwell’s nightmare.Some societal services can be restricted on citizens with low scores, such as which jobs or mortgages they can have, which schools they can apply for their children, whether they can travel overseas, or reserve a room in a luxurious hotel, a table in a 5-stars restaurant, or even just get a date. On the other hand, rewards can be given to citizens with high scores, such as renting cars and bicycles without leaving deposits or accessing easily the express security inspections at the Beijing airport and more. This implies that those citizens who are having bad behaviour, violating law and policies will be on a blacklist that is generated by implementing data-sharing platforms, which would deprive them from performing particular activities. This list holds the largest penalties, such as banning luxurious purchases, flight travelling, or applying restrictions over jobs, loans, internet speed and being publicly disgraced.

From a legitimate opinion, this blacklist procedure is planned to be prioritized over any direct penalty for rule-breaking. Obvious issues will be raised include defining the criteria that would be applied to rate citizens, the government and social organisations that would perform the ratings, and the effect of those ratings on citizens’ business, professional activities and on their lives in general.Actually, the criteria and factors could vary from one region or locality to another. Some local governments are creating their own criteria for the social credit system. Some can enable their citizens to search for information on their social credit via the locals own website. More issues should be considered over system robustness, breaching the system, data privacy, data security, social profiling, the transparency of algorithms, surveillance and power relationships between the government and its citizens. In such cases, corruption can happen as the social credit score is the one and only criteria for identifying the destiny of each citizen whether he would live an easy and luxurious life or would be dishonoured by society, so it could become a single point of failure. Hence, people will search for any means to reach those who are in control of the system in order to positively change their social credit score to serve their needs. So one can wonder what would happen for those who lived abroad for many years, what would be their social credit score after clicking so many “likes” on news links on Facebook critical about the pollution problem in China? I doubt their social credit score would be in the neighbourhood of negative 100].

Suggested resolutions for big data analytics issues

We can infer that the surveillance practices and principal changes in surveillance activities are increased by the use of big data analytics.To solve the problem, prohibiting large amounts of data collection is more likely to be unrealistic option so we should find an alternative way to allow authorised use of big data and protect our privacy at the same time, which can make our lives much easier, secured, and more productive.For instance, by using secured and authorised big data technology, people can stop worrying about stolen identities and possible financial loss as it has a significant improve on the efficiency of fraud detection. Therefore, to preserve the integrity of human rights controlling and defences, guidelines for the use of big data analytics should be developed in human rights.The main key to control the influence of big data is transparency, while addressing its security and privacy challenges. Information on what data is gathered, for what purposes, how the data is stored, who has access to it and how that access is granted should be attached. Users must be aware of the whole process. By providing such information about the security controls used in big data companies for how they protect the data they manage, they can earn public trust. In the case of China's social credit system, people need to trust individuals within the government or in general whoever is controlling the system. Controllers should provide transparency by reducing ambiguity and vagueness of the algorithms, so that the citizens make sure that their ratings and data are used responsibly and with their permission. The issue that could arise now is that the system could be hacked and securely threatened if the information about how it works is known. However, It is crucial to have transparency in how the scoring works, if human ratings could have a drastic impact on their lives.

Another technique can be used to protect large companies’ data from being hacked and if hacked, is called data anonymization. Anonymizing the data assures that all sensitive data are eliminated from the set of records gathered before initiating data analysis and processing, while preserving its format and data type.Individuals should be able to access, manage, and have control over what personal data companies collect from them and how their data is being used and shared. The collection, use and disclosure of personal data has to be done within the frame of its purpose. Transparency and individual control must be provided, if companies will use or share personal data for other purposes, by attaching these other purposes at the time of data collection so that the user is fully aware and has a control over the data he is providing. In addition, it should be possible that companies offer a way to individuals to withdraw or limit their agreements for the terms and conditions that are used as a method for granting consent in the first place.

Set reasonable boundaries on the personal data that companies gather and preserve. Only personal data needed to complete purposes specified should be gathered. Any personal data that is no longer needed, should be safely disposed, unless they are under a legitimate obligation to do so. Companies or organisations should provide security and responsible managing of personal data. Privacy and security risks accompanied by companies’ personal data practices should be evaluated carefully by companies and provide practical protections to control risks such as unauthorized access, use, destruction, or modification and improper disclosure. Companies should use practical methods to ensure they preserve accurate personal data. Furthermore, they should provide individuals with access to their personal data that they gather or preserve about them as well as a suitable way to give them the possibility to correct their erroneous data or request its removal or use limitation. To avoid any unplanned usage of sensitive data, tracking the movement of data within the organisational network should be possible. Moreover, to prevent the risk of malicious users, companies should define accessibility to those who work on company’s sensitive data.

Adopted resolutions in work practices

The resolutions the one would adopt in his future work practice or the measures to lower the privacy risks: • Use web browsers which has a "private browsing mode" that doesn’t save the web history on your own computer, to prevent others from accessing your computer to learn about your browsing

• Use an anonymous browser, like Hotspot Shield or Tor (The Onion Router) when visiting sites that might produce erroneous information about you that could result in drawing inaccurate conclusions by others. When internet users go online, it provides them with anonymity, and obscures where they're accessing the Internet from, even when they log into sites or use their real name
• Use HTTPS Everywhere, which is a browser add-on that attempts to secure the connection to websites whenever the web site you're visiting supports it
• Access an email account over a secure HTTPS connection to prevent your ISP, as well as people on your wifi network, from reading your mail as it travels between you and your mail provider. However, using email encryption software like PGP prevents even your webmail provider itself from reading the mail
• Use "host-proof hosting", which is a service that encrypts data on your own computer before being uploaded to a cloud service. Then the service provider itself can't read the data you're storing there without knowing your encryption password. These applications are called "host-proof" because they provide protection even against the service provider itself
• If you don’t read the entire policy of terms and conditions, you should take a moment before clicking ‘OK’ to consider why and with whom they're sharing their information
• Reduce the amount of sharing on social media. If you only have a few people you want to see photos or videos, then send directly to them instead of posting where many can access them
• Don’t provide information to businesses or other organizations that are not necessary for the purposes for which you’re doing business with them. Unless they really need your address and phone number, don’t give it to them
• Ask others not to share information online about you without your knowledge. The hard truth is that users need to protect themselves because nobody else will be doing it for them

Summary

In this paper, we discussed the most significant issue that faces society which is the implications of big data analysis and surveillance. However, everyone knows that big data analytics can truly change the fortune of a company or organisation. From preventing fraud to gaining a competitive edge over competitors to helping retain more customers and anticipating business demands- the possibilities with big data analytics are endless. Through the case of China’s social credit system, it demonstrated the role of big data in surveillance practices. Everything a Chinese citizen does will be monitored, evaluated and graded. It is social control at its best. By socially situating big data, it was shown what are the implications of its use. Using big data to control the populace makes Orwell seem prescient. Subsequently, some resolutions were suggested to reduce some risks of big data analytics. Understanding the implications of big data surveillance is more complex than simply knowing who is surveilled more or less. Instead, we need to understand who is surveilled by whom, in what way, and for what purpose. In the last decade, big data has come a very long way and overcoming these challenges is going to be one of the major goals of the Big data analytics industry in the coming years.