The current EU data privacy guideline will be replaced by a regulation in 2018 and Safe Harbor has just been replaced by Privacy Shield for EU->US data transfer, but it will probably not change much.
Compared to the EU, in the US data privacy is hardly existent but people seem to accept it.
edit This is not even touching on the fact that all the data these US companies mine of European citizens is also accessible by the NSA in one form or another (no, Privacy Shield does not effectively prevent this) and the implications that arise from this.
This! Seriously, there's moral relativism and there's squabbling whether a human right "would be nice to have". They/we don't call it a human right lightly. It's to shine a spotlight on something very important that people otherwise don't realise.
> This is not even touching on the fact that all the data these US companies mine of European citizens is also accessible by the NSA
Well in a way, it does. Total surveillance by governments that openly admit you have zero rights in their eyes (as do their citizens, by the way, many times, even on HN ...) is one of the many terrible implications of the existence of these databases.
I feel that the IT world is irresponsible in its collection of data, and doesn't treat it as the liability it is.
(What's the proper word for old data/information before computers)?
A lot of that is due to a lack of training. There's two major ways new people come into programming.
1. Go to college, get a computer science or engineering degree.
2. Self taught.
Neither of those prepares you to deal with the ethics of information storage.
I happened to have an entire course on the topic but only because I took an Information Science minor with my Computer Science major. That course wasn't even an optional elective for me otherwise.
A computer science degree trains you for thinking how to do something. It doesn't teach you how to figure if you should do something.
IMO every SE curriculum should contain a mandatory course looking into historical precedents how information was used in genocides and oppressive regimes (Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic are two of the most obvious examples but there are plenty others).
It's ridiculous how it took Trump to get elected for the liberal techies in my Twitter stream to realise that the US government has the power to do really bad things with all the data FB & friends have been collecting.
On the other hand, the data private organisations collect is not restricted - neither what data is collected, nor how or from who.
If voter registration started to ask for skin color, there would be immediate public outrage. If credit scoring services include skin color as a scoring factor, it's a trade secret...
You pretty much need a state ID or drivers license, which lists your skin color. Political contributions are a matter of public record for anticurruption purposes. Vital records offices are more than sufficient for tracing ancestry. Welfare offices know who is poor and medically needy. Telecoms and the post office knew who you communicated with.
There was more than enough information to mount a holocaust on any of those axes long before the current crop of tech companies.
Again, this worst case scenario may not happen, but the fact that it can, even if only with a small chance, makes this massive data collection totally irresponsible.
Also it's a bit of a bizarre argument that tech companies are doing data collection on such a massively intrusive scale, we should really look at the government databases first because they're already more than enough to screw us over with? It's not even a "but they're doing it more!" ...
Files.
That said, I wouldn't consider it wrong, per se, to call it data or information these days. Strictly-speaking, old files and records do constitute data, whether they happen to be digitized or not.
Facebook doesn't sell information, it sells ads. That's not the same thing.
The companies that try to sell those types of profiles, by IP or cookie syncing or whatever, seemed to get it wildly, wildly wrong - but the role of accuracy/auditing in the ads business is another discussion. FB seems to be buying a different sort of data than we were, since they know so much more (first/last/birthdate, etc).
Anyway, this is a problem that doesn't start or stop with FB, and the brokers are the dangerous part.
As people shy away from phone calls, and with the competition of VoIP, we gradually saw the erosion of the price per minute we could charge (roughly 40% drop over the course of 5 years).
The company tried to shift by looking at the data we had available. Millions of phone calls, and we knew exactly what kind of service was being called. Banks, airlines, airports, sex lines, restaurants, customer support, whatever. We could see when people called most, for how long, and we even knew which service inside the call centre they were talking to.
It wasn't long before the company wanted to exploit this, and they started working on the ability to play ads while people were waiting to get in touch with a service representative. Targeted ads.
Based on phone habits, we could tell whether the person calling was a stay-at-home parent, retiree, teen, young professional, etc. We could also tell their gender, in 60-70% of cases.
Because of the technology, we had access to actual phone number, even when people called with restricted identity. It's just how it works when you are registered as a "network operator".
This shift from "let's provide an amazing service" to "let's mine the crap out of everyone" definitely contributed in my leaving the company.
That's not really possible. Proof: Say Alice is your client, and her ad targets gay people (even though the ad or the advertised product itself is not necessarily related to being gay). Then using your data about sexual preference, you serve the ads only to gay people. Only gay people will see the ad, and thus only gay people will reach Alice's website. Hence Alice got the data out. QED.
Imagine the government put a policeman on every corner and they recorded the movements of every person in the neighborhood at all times. 4:36pm Mr. Jones walked to newsstand, 4:43pm Mrs Jones opens front door, looks around, closes front door. 4:45pm Mr. Smith dog starts barking. 4:51pm Unknown man shows up at Mr. and Mrs Miller's house. Mr Miller is not home. She invites him in. 5:01pm Mrs Wayne tends to her tomato garden.
Many (most?) people would feel creeped out to know they are being constantly watched and all activities logged. And yet Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook and a bunch of others are trying to do exactly that through your computer, your online activity and through your phone and eventually they'll probably also do it with cameras and mics
That argument relies on the collected data being closer to the truth, than the absence of it. I think that may be true for (statistically) normal people. But for narcissists and sociopaths, it may also be a helpful tool for someone creating a fake alter ego of benevolence and 'harmlessness'.
The implications and other uses and data transfers are not talked, or often known about. Just like when you look into food production or global supply chains you find many inconvenient truths there too. As age is so often correlated with cynicism it's probable that many tech applicants (to FB or anywhere) are simply not adequately cynical yet. There's quite a few cases of high profile techies suddenly and surprisingly (well according to reportage anyway :) becoming rather anti.
btw I thought The Circle far too gentle, and simplistic, about the criticism.
Perhaps it's the "cynical Brit" perspective as I felt very much the same about Black Mirror after arrival at Netflix.
Moreover, in the age of information, the one who knows more about the other becomes a potential predator (every country has secret services and spies).
Facebook (and others) knows a lot more about me than I do myself because their computers don't forget, because they analyze what I do in a way I don't.
Moreover Facebook can be tied to other companies or institutions with my consent.
So although the optimization might seem like a good idea, I think it also needs to be put in context. Is this really a good idea. Is optimizing advertisement a noble goal ? It's useful for the advertisers, true. But is it useful for their targets ?
And that's okay, so far as they're open about it. But I don't think they are, especially the sophistication of their psychology research (and experimentation).
If there's so much crap, maybe I want to be able to complain about it.
People might act on the tsunami of crap in manners that may not be profitable for Facebook.
The solution to undesirable, stupid, homeless, uneducated, etc etc isn't to hide it from your vision.
Aside from that this is as silly as "If you don't like organized crime don't buy stuff from the mafia and there's no problem."
It's the involuntary participation in facebook's arrangement that people are bothered by.
And don't use any site with the Facebook "Like" thumbs-up thingy, which is tracking what sites you visit.
Data they don't own. So I suppose, "noble" in the Robin Hood kind of way.
Also, "efficient" in what way? What metric do they optimize that lets advertising benefit society?
Information about you is not necessarily owned by you.
That's all great, but how can I opt-out? Even without a facebook account, they are collecting my data.
AOL: Hi, this is John at AOL. How may I help you today?
Ferrari: I want to cancel my account.
AOL: OK. I mean, is there a problem with the software itself?
Ferrari: No. I don't use it. I don't need it. I don't want it.
John disputes Ferrari's claim that he never uses the account.
AOL: Last year, last month it was 545 hours of usage.
Ferrari: I don't know how to make it any clearer. So I'm just gonna say it one last time. Cancel the account.
AOL: Well, explain to me what is wrong.
Ferrari: I'm not explaining anything to you. Cancel the account.
It goes on like this for 5 minutes.
Ferrari: Cancel my account. Cancel the account. Cancel the account.
From: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/13447232/ns/business-cnbc_tv/t/how...
IIRC, from the audio the AOL rep. just goes on about how he's "just there to help you". To me, this is the same. "We just want to give you the best advertising that is relevant to you!" So possibly these people just take them at face value. Which is usually a bad idea when there's a profit motive.
The impulse to make something better by applying a database engine that you might feel for business processes, can just as easily be felt for customer interactions or the world at large.
For an interesting (and very critical) look at this philosophy I recommend The Circle by Dave Eggers.