Now that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. Major corporations are likely in panic mode, trying to come up with a plan to save the sinking ship. That ship being tens of thousands of jobs, technological innovation, and extensive financial investments such as retirement funds. It’s become apparent to me banning the practice of collecting sensitive data isn’t a viable proposal. I have an idea for consideration, which will allow big data and its consumers to keep innovating. Potentially even increasing the worth of data substantially, while helping to protecting privacy of citizens and businesses, and therefore national security. Mind you, this general idea applies only to the US. First, a few important points to keep in mind about big tech, social media, and the data being collected. The individuals that innovated and established the current business model, or the “Zuckerberg’s” if you will. And the many brilliant minds that work for those companies should not be blamed or demonized. It seems obvious to me that everyone involved was seeking to accomplish good for society, gather data for science, social improvement, and technological innovation. The situation unfortunately is being abused by entities with malicious intentions by exploiting the data and platforms designed to help connect people. Black hat hackers and adversarial nation-states. So what should we do? If data isn’t being collected, many jobs are put in jeopardy, investments put at risk, and innovation stifled. On the other side of the issue, is the data collected worth the risk to national security? The Misinformation, Disinformation, Extremist groups and cults, divisiveness, election integrity, and many other issues the country is facing are being amplified by the data in question. While none of these issues are new by any stretch of the imagination, until recently we have even done a good job at marginalizing the instigators, what has changed? The internet is more connected globally, more robust, and much faster than in the past. Seemingly everyone now has a microphone, camera, and an audience to broadcast to. Many sensors constantly generating data. The data in question is detailed enough that it points out weaknesses or vulnerabilities to exploit. From both an individual level and entire demographics. The data can infer a person or groups, Interests, religion, sexual preference, age, race, political leaning, possibly even favorite alcoholic beverage. It can also capture an individuals mindset about a particular topic. What is worried about the most?, what makes them happy?, sad?, etc. That data is then converted into numbers and metrics. Almost any successful business from fast food to politics is now using information generated from the data to make practically all important decisions. Many customers of the data are now combining datasets from multiple sources which enriches the information. At this point a profiles can be created of an individual. For instance, name, email addresses, accounts from other sites, physical address, phone number, place of employment, credit score, criminal history, marriage certificate, friends, family, children, schools attended, automobiles, income, estimated wealth, debt. Eventually, almost everything about a person, friends and family can be learned or inferred, and potentially exploited. From my perspective, American’s data should be thought of moving forward as a national asset. I think about how it might be regulated and managed similar to some combination of the US dollar and oil. By restricting who gets access to the information, anonymizing, actively purging old and unauthorized and protecting new, it’s worth will increase. The Federal Government should take control of the data being gathered. Enforce stringent regulations and guidelines about who can purchase access to the data, and how to safeguard citizens’ and businesses’ privacy. How to scrub data from personal identifiers. Equally important, Government will be in charge of finding the appropriate data and getting it to approved consumers. Big Tech and others will still write algorithms that generate the data, however, it needs to be turned over to the government’s possession. The government will have to get in the business of cybersecurity, data science, privacy and tech policy. Private sector data centers might fill immediate needs such as AWS, Azure, Google. It will require strict oversight to make sure the data is in control of the government, and not accessible to others. Smaller companies can’t easily afford to secure and store the data they collect, and much larger ones aren’t in the business of securing that data. They are in the business of generating and selling it. The problem is data getting into the hands of bad actors. “Good” and “bad” are subjective. We can’t expect corporations to be responsible for users’ data in its business dealings. Which should be obvious to anyone by now. To be fair, that’s not their primary goal or objective. We should allow them to do what they do best. Who they sell the data to and for how much isn’t in the scope of my proposed solution. However, it should allow for small and medium-size American businesses an opportunity to flourish. For those that might make the argument that innovation might be stifled, or that customers of data will simply buy elsewhere. My argument is, each country and society generates unique information. South Africa will not generate the same data as the United States. A communist country will not generate the same information as a Democratic country. (At least outside of the basics) I believe information from a democratic, technologically advanced society will be of more value than from other countries. That’s not to say we can’t or shouldn’t try to collect as much information as possible from other countries. If US data is properly regulated, marketed, and proves valuable to our businesses giving an edge over global competition. Its monetary worth may very well increase exponentially. As the situation stands, it’s more or less a smash and grab free-for-all, race to the bottom. The current business model needs to more accurately reflect the importance of the data. Anyone from Politicians, Judges, CEO’s, Celebrities, Intelligence, and any other individual in a position of potential influence, authority, or gatekeeper is at risk of blackmail, intimidation, and other micro-targeted forms of coercion.There would need to be some technically minded committee that oversees the data to make sure it’s not being abused by its owners or anyone else. And can quickly make policy changes if serious issues are identified. My thought is. There are three entities or stake holders in this situation. (1)Corporations, which get paid from the data their algorithms and services generate from the citizens. (2)The citizens, who generate the data from the corporate created services and who's online privacy needs protected by government. (3)The government, who controls and stores the data, pays the corporations from its sale, protects the citizens privacy for national security reasons. The idea being, if government tries to abuse its power and use the data to spy on its citizens, that data will eventually be leaked or stolen, or at the very least put at risk, which in theory would significantly reduce its monetary worth. Therefor, corporations and their deep pocketed lawyers would protect the citizens privacy from government spying. The Government doesn't want its citizens privacy leaked to other countries or hackers because it can lead to national security issues, and doesn't want to be sued by corporations for accessing data needlessly. (work in progress, still trying to figure out an equitable balance.) Those that control the data and information will control the power in the world order. We already understand this. We don't want corporations to have more power than government. Therefor government needs to have the information. Where things get lost (in my opinion) now that the internet is here to stay and globally connected. A private business or corporation isn’t restricted to only buying and selling to American’s. Shareholders can be international. This means the free market mindset, and small-government doesn’t play out. From small businesses to multinational conglomerates, with varying interests, subsidiaries, and supply chains will not stand a chance against an adversarial country targeting them or their market share. Especially a communist country that doesn’t play by the same rules as everyone else. Unfortunately, from my perspective, getting government involved is a necessary evil for many reasons. In short, It’s better to debate domestic policies and regulations among ourselves, than allow adversarial nations the opportunity to pick apart American businesses and technologies one at a time, erode the economy, and America’s global influence. This proposal or general framework isn’t perfect and possibly raises more questions than it answers. Changes would obviously need to be made in certain areas and possibly require new advancements in tech. For instance, how do we keep American data from leaving the country, how can we ensure other countries aren’t collecting Americans data on American soil, and how can we ensure it’s secure? It’s not apparent to me we have a firm grasp on keeping information secure at this point in time. I say that as a Cybersecurity Engineer. When Intelligence agencies, contractors, creditors, hospitals, banks, virtually every industry has had serious breaches in the past several years with no end in sight, that tells me the situation is not under control. After all, we have humans designing and operating the systems. The reality of the situation is the US has more to lose than anyone else. We gave every country in the world a means to potentially inflict loss. We can’t defend against every possible enemy, from every possible attack, at all times, especially those unknown. Constructive criticism is always welcome. As they say, If you are agreed with by everyone, you’re likely in the wrong place. The status quo is a danger to the country for many reasons as is hopefully clear. Regulations will not fix the multi-dimensional issues. There are too many other connected pieces at play that need addressing. Technologist and guru of security, Bruce Schneier, said it best, “Now that computer systems are connected to everything, its rules now apply to everything.” This solution tries to tackle all the major issues at once while acknowledging the importance of the data collection, privacy, economy, and national security. One last point. This proposed idea gives a potential way out from the direction we have been heading for the past 20 years or so, towards an authoritarian rule. We have been straying from a free society now for sometime. The internet has generally been a Pandora’s box of unforeseen consequences. It's important to get out in front of the coming fallout from big data collection and sort of hijack the anger and blame, and redirect it at the root cause, and offer an appropriate solution before politicians get involved and do what they do best. Applying simple non-technological solutions to complex technical problems, addressing only the symptoms, and causing more issues than the original problem presented. We also need to enlighten policy makers on the proper way to think of security going forward. We will never catch “All the bad guys”. Eroding the privacy and rights of 99.9999% of the population in an attempt to squeeze the last drop of evil from society, is a shortsighted and foolish idea. Especially, when there are 4,450 federal criminal laws on record to be broken, It’s very likely impossible not to break federal laws regularly, even if you don't know it. Specifically in a for-profit corporate ran prison system, in which shareholders and their quarterly earnings depend on the head count of “criminals” imprisoned. People are products of their environment, if you treat people like criminals and terrorists they are eventually going to act like them. Show me a man with nothing left to lose, and I’ll show you a man not afraid of losing. McElroy, W. (2011, October 10). Decriminalize the Average Man: Wendy McElroy. Retrieved October 20, 2020, from https://ift.tt/3m6gx3N, J. (n.d.). Revisiting the Explosive Growth of Federal Crimes. Retrieved October 20, 2020, from https://ift.tt/3dHVyBD, B., Rainie, L., Anderson, M., Perrin, A., Kumar, M., & Turner, E. (2020, August 17). Americans and Privacy: Concerned, Confused and Feeling Lack of Control Over Their Personal Information. Retrieved October 20, 2020, from https://ift.tt/35cXIFq Gilman Venable Professor of Law, M. G. (2020, January 31). Data insecurity leads to economic injustice – and hits the pocketbooks of the poor most. Retrieved October 20, 2020, from https://ift.tt/2TccHK7 via /r/technology https://ift.tt/3mb1Yfh
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