Big data technologies – and predictive analytics in particular – can empower
organisations with astonishing capabilities. Knowing a lot about an individual
user, consumer or citizen makes it possible to forecast their specific needs and
behaviour, sometimes with a very high degree of precision. Used responsibly,
this capability to anticipate needs can be massively beneficial. Time can be saved,
services personalised, and – in perhaps the most significant cases – decisions
made or behaviours altered to avert undesirable outcomes.
We do all of these things already to some extent, from relying on linked data
to speed up transactions to trying to eliminate or mitigate lifestyle factors that
increase our risks of illness or disease.
We are increasingly encountering, however, situations where big data analytics
collide with difficult issues around privacy and ethics.
To take just a few examples:
zz Retailers can use data on purchases in conjunction with other publicly available
information to infer intimate information about an individual’s or household’s
circumstances. This can be extremely valuable for targeting promotions and
building customer loyalty. Not all customers are happy, however, with the
intensity of scrutiny that can be applied. In one famous example, the US
retailer Target overstepped when it inferred that a teenager was pregnant (and
mailed out coupons accordingly) before she had told her parents.42
zz Social networks, search engines and other online services can deploy
sophisticated methods to track a user’s behaviour online, infer what they will
be interested in and predict changes in their personal circumstances. Finegrained
patterns in relationships can be discerned from scraping status updates
from Facebook – and might be used to predict when individual relationships
will form and end if combed with other information on a user’s behaviour
and connections in the social graph.43 Google’s recent changes to its privacy
policy helpfully consolidate a number of different regimes together, but also
increase the company’s ability to target advertising across all of its services.44
zz Security and counter-terrorism agencies are working against a backdrop of
massive growth in electronic communications and increasingly sophisticated
adversaries. At the time of writing the government is consulting on proposals
to extend the state’s ability to monitor, intercept and store traffic and content
data from electronic communications.45 The arguments for an expansion of
powers are in tension with rights to privacy and civil liberties. On the one
hand, the more information the authorities have access to, the better their
ability to monitor and pre-empt threats. On the other, many citizens object
to having their activities and communications closely monitored on a routine
basis.
zz Political parties are increasingly deploying big data analytics to enable microsegmentation
of voters. A detailed understanding of individual circumstances
and priorities can enable campaign materials personalised on a household-byhousehold
basis. This sort of activity is already commonplace in the United
States. For political parties these sorts of tactics can make a crucial difference
when margins of victory are small. Some commentators, however, argue that
these developments are fuelling divisive and extreme partisan positions at the
expense of reasoned public debate.46
As government continues to explore and expand on its use of big data tools and
technologies it will inevitably encounter more of these sorts of tensions. And from
its position of authority it bears particular responsibility for executing analytics
responsibly. How a government chooses to behave in this arena sets the standard
for its peers and for other organisations that work with data in its jurisdiction.
Governments should have the utmost respect for civil liberties – and citizens
themselves can and must hold their government to the highest ethical and moral
standards.