So in my research this week I learned about an important milestone on the path to mass surveillance. This milestone was a program called Apache Hapdoop. This was a software library released in 2005 that would allow for the distribution of large amounts of data across multiple computers. This article by Andrew Leonard talks about the importance of this software in everyday use of the internet. I find it very interesting that he says, “The gift economy has delivered us the surveillance state.” The use of gift economy in this sentence is very important. At least in my opinion, when one is referring to a gift economy they do not think of a bad connotation. But what if someone, say a government organization like the NSA, uses this gift to spy on citizens.
When Leonard is referring to Hapdoop as a “gift” he is touching on the fact that it is Open Source software. Open Source means that everything about that piece of software is available to the public: how it is put together, how it runs, etc. This allows users to tweak the code if there is a flaw, or if they want to customize the functionality of the program. Hapdoop was a very important key to the growth of the internet. With its growing user base, the channels of the internet were getting overwhelmed by the volume of data that had to be trafficked through servers. Hapdoop was a great solution to this problem. From what I understand it boils down to distributing the traffic over a mass of cheaper computers rather than overwhelming a single expensive computer.
The introduction of this new technology was a blessing to organizations of all kinds. Search engines and social media sites needed faster ways of transmitting data with their growing user base. Not only were they able to handle this data, but they were also able to observe it. Without Hadoop sites such as Facebook wouldn’t be able to target ads according to the individual. Hadoop was also able to be customized by these companies that were using it. By adapting this tool to observe their users companies are able to measure what people are doing while on the website.
This data is very valuable to companies. Once again targeted ads comes to mind when I think of this value. Another statement Leonard makes is, “What kinds of ads made them more likely to pull out their credit cards?“ Facebook is notorious for finding news ways to collect data on their users in order to sell things. I remember about a month ago I started to read an article about Facebook’s mobile application. In the middle of the article I took out my phone and deleted it. It was revealed that an update to the application allowed it to read users SMS and MMS. To many people, myself included, this is quite alarming. In this article it states that Facebook did come out to address any concerns that arose from the new update. A good amount of smartphone owners were still concerned with this privacy violation.
Later in the article Leonard touches on a really good point. A red flag should raise when a secretive agency such as the NSA is contributing an Open Source project such as Hadoop. Over the years the Hadoop software has been altered and improved to fit different needs. Leonard talks about how government agencies were some of the first adopters of this new technology. When they release the improvements to the public some companies gobble up this information and use it to make a profit. Not only can companies observe your habits, with newer technology they can even “predict” what you will do next.
Further on, I like how Leonard segues into how this prediction is changing the way that we interact with the internet. In my course on privacy and security on the internet we talked about how the internet was developed in the Cold War era to hopefully survive a nuclear strike. It mainly gave organizations the ability to communicate data over a large distance. Now, as Leonard puts it, the internet is a medium of manipulation.
There is an interesting quote that Leonard puts in this article:
“But individuals who find common ground in contributing to open source projects do not, as a whole, share beliefs on what constitutes the ideal ‘Open Society,’” said Stata. “Is using Big Data to make inferences about people a Bad Thing at all, no matter who does it? Or is it no big deal? Or does it depend on who’s doing it, and for what reason (and with what transparency)? Should we be more worried about Big Business, or Big Government?” (Statement made by Raymie Stata)
This raises the interesting question. Is spying on users really a bad thing? This is a hard question to answer due to its subjectiveness. It will be interesting to see how people respond when prompted with this questions. In our face-paced world do users mind if a government is watching their every move, or do they just move on to the next web page without much thought?