Data gone AWOL ” According to DeVry, it’s one of the top cybersecurity threats that could end up affecting your life. As it turns out, it may already have.
Recent revelations that Trump-hired political marketing firm Cambridge Analytica illegally harvested user data from Facebook to influence the 2016 US elections has shocked the world, but the Washington Post reports that it might be worse than we realize.
While Cambridge Analytica wrongfully obtained data on 50 million unconsenting users in 2015 and 2014, Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a privacy expert and co-founder of PersonalData.IO, believes that the data has already spread to other groups, other databases, and across the dark web.
It is the whole nature of this ecosystem, Dehaye said to Washington Post reporters. This data travels. And once it has spread, there is no way to get it back.
For anybody who isn’t up on the headlines, here’s a quick (and comedic) summation of what’s happened so far, as broken down by Stephen Colbert.
All of this has lead to comparisons to the Obama campaign’s use of social media, as well as increased calls for data, social network, and internet regulations.
Comparisons With Obama
Conservatives seem keen to point out a double-standard in this affair. Politifact points to a transcript between two co-hosts of ABC’s morning entertainment talk show, The View :
“It happened under Obama, and it was lauded by the media as being genius,” co-host Meghan McCain said. “And now under the Trump campaign ” it’s the Cambridge Analytica scandal.”
“Was it the same thing?” co-host Joy Behar asked.
“Yeah,” McCain said. “It was micro-targeting and data mining.”
“I think it’s different, though,” said co-host Sunny Hostin.
“It’s not different, though!” McCain exclaimed.
The same Politifact article teases out whether these two instances are the actually the same or not. The major distinctions are that the Obama campaign Facebook app was clear about supporting a political campaign ” Trump used Cambridge Analytica clandestinely, and his app was billed as a personality quiz, not a campaign tool. On top of that, 300,000 people were affected by Obama’s campaign app, one-fiftieth of the 50 million affected by CA.
Whatever the case, the CA scandal is backdropped by further allegations of election tampering and the erosion of democracy by foreign powers. The use of big data is obviously going to be a contentious and everlasting element involved in future elections ” and this is exactly why some people are claiming that it’s time to regulate the internet.
Regulating the Internet
Franklin Foer, writing for The Atlantic, points out (after much Zuckerberg-bashing) that in May, the European Union will begin to enforce a set of laws called the General Data Protection Regulation. This single set of standards for the whole EU will give citizens the power to resist data exploitation, erase data, and will instruct tech companies to clearly explain how online personal information that they’ve collected will be used.
The time has arrived for the United States to create its own regulatory infrastructure, designed to accord with our own values and traditions ”a Data Protection Authority … As in Europe, citizens should have the right to purge data that sits on pack-rat servers. Companies should be required to set default options so that citizens have to affirmatively opt for surveillance rather than passively accept the loss of privacy, writes Foer. Of course, creating a Data Protection Authority would introduce a dense thicket of questions. And there’s a very reasonable fear that the rich and powerful will attempt to leverage these rules to squash journalism that they dislike.
In other countries, regulation has already taken place. In Finland, officials feel that their strong public education system and a coordinated government response have been enough to stave off Russia’s propaganda; Sri Lanka banned Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram entirely, writes Phuc Pham for WIRED. Which is to say, it’s a wide gamut.
The problem right now with regulating the internet is the same problem that got us into this Cambridge Analytica mess in the first place.
“They’re politicians, they’re not technical,” the head of CA told ITN Channel 4 News, of the investigation into the scandal. “They don’t understand how it works.”
Indeed, regulating the internet would begin with Facebook and data, but then we start thinking about the challenges associated with protecting the internet of things (IoT), including smart roads and self-driving cars, and even unmanned aerial vehicles (aka drones), things become much more complicated.
Some have suggested new and improved technology ” such as the blockchain ” to improve privacy and security on the web. These improvements are promising, but basic understandings of them are lost on our legislators.
As such, regulation may be coming soon. Let us just hope that it is executed with as much knowledge as there is zeal behind the topic.
