When GE’s Paul Rogers spoke at the first Internet of Things privacy conference held by TRUSTe, he came at the subject from what is the dominant “gee whiz” perspective of just how efficient and effective big data collection can be for companies, customers and consumers. There is no doubt that a more efficient electrical grid or airline maintenance in advance of a problem are valuable outcomes. But data is nothing if not dynamic; it grows and as it does it begins to suggest new possibilities. These secondary uses of even the most routine data can quickly cross the line from beneficial to creepy.
By now most U.S. television viewers have seen the ads for Progressive Insurance’s “snapshot,” a device plugged into automobiles that can help analyze behavior behind the wheel. The pitch is quite specific: we’ll help you lower rates, the information won’t be used to increase them. They won’t have to because as Progressive drivers not using the device see their costs increase to cover the losses of the worst drivers, they’ll either get with the program or move to another carrier.
Biometric building access systems already do more than let the right person in the right door, they confirm time on the job. Event data recorders in automobiles already do more than guide engineers in refining breaking systems, they can help the court determine responsibility. And we are all aware, even if we ignore it mostly, that our smartphones are more than entertainment or productivity tools, they are a global positioning system for our daily lives.
Whatever your metaphor — genie in a bottle, toothpaste in a tube — it is unlikely we will begin to collect less data, so the task is to be smarter, clearer and more directed in the uses of what we will collect. Delivering on the promises of the old regime of letting people know what is being collected, why it is being collected and how long it will be kept is the best way to introduce the new reality labeled “big data” where we collect it all, for reasons yet-to-be-determined and hold onto it forever.
As USA Today said in its report on the Internet of Things or IoT meeting, “If there was a recurring theme to the one-day conference, it was the debate between the tremendous potential offered by IoT in terms of improving corporate efficiency and the potential social impact of sacrificing privacy on the altar of progress.”
It is the job of those who collect the data to make sure this doesn’t happen. A good first step is to view secondary (or tertiary) uses of data as if they were an initial application. Just as product development generally passes through a multidisciplinary group, data uses can benefit from the same across-the-board review. Otherwise the backlash will wipe out the gain.
As one panelist, Michelle Dennedy of Intel Security, put it, “what is our ethical code?”
