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Privacy in the Age of Big Data

Introduction

The modern world has become a world of big data. Data has become such an essential

aspect of the livelihoods of people, with its diverse use like being a reliable source of great social

and economic value, and raw material in some production areas. Over the past few years, data

mining, analysis, computing data power, and data storage capacities have increased immensely

due to the rising demand of the named services by the government, businesses, and individuals.

Again, there are many people, sensors, and devices that have digital network connections; thus,

making data generation, communication, accessing and sharing easy. Big data has created and is

still increasing the value of digital innovations, economy, productivity, growth, and efficiency in

the world. However, the increase in data usage brings concerns about the privacy of the data in

use, and at times, it leads to limited innovations and slow growth in the economy of data. Several

policymakers have raised concerns about the data usage and privacy protection of individuals.

Nonetheless, issues like consent about the use of personal data, limitations to the use of data

available, and minimal private data availability are yet to be addressed.

The Biggest Privacy Concerns

Collection of bulk data and using it for analysis raises the concern about data privacy.

Protection of data privacy and security has become more difficult because information

multiplication and sharing across the world has become easy. Personal information such a

person’s location, health, online activity, and electricity use, have recently been exposed to

analysis thus, raising privacy concerns about the discrimination, profiling, loss of control and

exclusion (Wang et al. 5). This de-identification was not the case in the past as organizations

used anonymization, encryption, pseudonymization, and data shading and key-coding as ways to

de-identify real identities of people hence, allowing analysis to take place but not compromising

privacy concerns of the individuals. Computer scientists have, however, shown that it is possible

to re-identify anonymized data and then attribute it to a specific individual. Therefore, even with

anonymization, one’s privacy is still undermined, and this has made people to lose faith in de-

identification. Those at stake are businesses and government as they often use de-identification

in composing business models such as in online advertising, health data and cloud computing but

with the rising privacy concerns, it is hard for them to conduct their analysis as people are not

giving accurate data.

Cases of Privacy Violations

It is difficult to foretell when one intends to use the big transformative data and for what

purpose. There are several examples of companies who made the use of big data. For instance,

Kaiser Permanente did a cost and clinical data analysis of Vioxx where he presented the cause of

the adverse effects of this product, and from the report, people were able to understand the origin

of a high number of deaths related to cardiac arrest between 1999 – 2003 (Rubin 39). Also,

Google Flu Trends made its predictions about flu outbreaks through the use of big data, although
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they had not initially intended to use the data for the named purpose. Thus, there are data rights

violations.

Further, some governments are using personal data of car owners to help in controlling

traffic congestions and reduce the emission of environmental pollutants. The vehicle users pay

according to the average usage of the car and road. Again, the use of big data has increased, even

in the retail market. For instance, Wal-Mart is using a system of inventory management by

involving the suppliers, whereby, a given supplier can know the number of their supplied

products in a specific retail store at any time. By use of features in the online world, producers

can gather customer feedback about a given product, and with this information, they can conduct

product analysis in terms of the relevant quality issues.

The Extent of Privacy Rights

There are many arguments about the extent of terming data as private, even with the

many proposals of all data being treated as identifiable and a subject to a given person by the

law. However, if this proposal were upheld, then many organizations would no longer use de-

identification, thus increasing data security and privacy risks rather than alleviating it. Again, if

all data were made personally identifiable, the data protection and privacy framework in place

would be of no use. If this framework were extended a little bit, complying and managing its

scope would be difficult. Again, if the privacy of personal data is not protected, that is,

anonymized data being re-identified to a particular individual, would curtail the beneficial use of

the available data (Wang et al. 7). The reason behind this concern is that people will assume the

judgment about a given data was made entirely in favor of the individual in question; hence,

undermining the value of the data. Therefore, there is need to set standards on the limits of

terming information private. The setting of the rules should be according to the amount of the
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data, the consent of the individual, and the purpose intended for the data analysis. However, the

policymakers should ensure the data privacy restrictions are applicable and can be practiced.

Data protection and privacy laws are there to guide people and organization on privacy

principles such as purpose limitation and data minimization. Even with these principles being in

place, people have not yet understood the connection between data collection and violation of

individual’s privacy, and thus, there is more and more information being collected every day and

then shared in our modern world of big data (Chen and Hong 650). There is a need to have a

balance of data protection and privacy against the common values in the society such as national

security, public health, environmental protection, law enforcement, and efficiency in the

economy. A coherent privacy protection framework should be based on a risk milieu, and it

should consider the value of various data uses concerning individual autonomy as well as the

privacy risks that one could encounter. So, if the benefits of the data at hand outweigh the

personal privacy risks, it can legally even without the consent of the individual. For instance,

web analytics which involves collecting, measuring, analyzing and makes reports about internet

data to understand and optimize web usage, usually ends up adding value to the existing products

and services thus, helping to serve the consumers better. If analytics implemented statistical data

in the de-identified form correctly, then data security and privacy risks can be minimized, and

the use of anonymized data can be applicable and useful in this era.

Privacy framework should emphasize the role of consent in big data. However,

individuals should be advised on how they can protect their personal information by keeping

private or instead sharing just minimal information regarding them on social networks (Chen and

Hong 648). Cognitive biases have led to an increase in information complexity in the ecosystem.

It would be necessary if businesses and individuals are allowed to control the data they provide
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during researches and in their profiling. Many service providers who ask for personal

information, in most cases, have a privacy policy term and this makes many individuals believe

that their privacy is protected, but this does not happen always. There are cases where people

report that their privacy have been violated even with the privacy policy in place. Hence, service

providers should ensure that privacy policies in place are not just liability disclaimers but rather

be an assurance of privacy protection for the users.

Conclusion

Data security regulators and privacy rights advocates criticize the era of big data due to

the increasing data collection ubiquity and sharing and access of information that has been

enabled by the unlimited storage and powerful processors that are readily available. Businesses

and individuals are looking forward to a world where innovations will no longer be independent

on big data available but instead on the growing needs in the society. The use of data for

business and researchers’ advantages should be stopped, and individual privacy rights be

advocated for by everyone. As such, this will help regulate data that is usually processed without

the consent of the individual just because the information meets the interest of the business or the

web provider.
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Works Cited

Chen, Deyan, and Hong Zhao. "Data security and privacy protection issues in cloud

computing." 2012 International Conference on Computer Science and Electronics

Engineering. Vol. 1. IEEE, 2012.

Rubin, Rita. "How did Vioxx debacle happen?" USA today 12 (2004).

Wang, Cong, et al. "Privacy-preserving public auditing for data storage security in cloud

computing." 2010 proceedings ieee infocom. Ieee, 2010.