Morning Question and Answer Session (2J3V)
February 16, 2005 (2J3W)
O'Harrow Q & A (2J3Z)
- Q: When you are going tp use location-specific infoo, whay do you want to know? GIS, etc. limitied info. (2J44)
- A: Noplacetohide.net a good website. You raise an important analogy - 3inch crack in teh sidewlak? doing this not b/c want to know but b/c they can. Will produce data before use - find use later. In general now, there is 20 million records on evcery adult american - can they (private companies) use this? no, but the amout of info is increasing, and will continue. B.c you are able to use or they will find use of info to predict different traits, characteristics, behavioral patterns, etc. (2J45)
- Q: The people who can are teh people who have resources. What about those who don't know ro don't have acces to the resources. (2J46)
- A: ISsue is that thre is a real inbalance here. Theory - exchange perfect info. But what we are talkingabout is ahuge imbalance between those who know and those who don't. e.g. citibank (RFID Chip) to see financial activities. (2J47)
- Q: the youngest genereation doesn't care about the data trail the are leaving behind bc this is the only thing thy have ever known? Are there going to be chacks and balacnes? (2J48)
- Everheard of awar, inc? group that wanted to be aware of subversive activities in the communitst party. There were very few kids that weren't aware of it but it doesn;t mean anything. But in reality (IBM just bought a co. called SRID - allows to bring all kinds of data together, and funded by the CIA), if there is a source of power is the avg joe going to understand how the info is used? Is it a level playing field? (2J49)
- Q: What is the solution - if federal laws are 20 or 30 years behind technology what is the asn=wer here. How do we protect privacy? Do we have privacy 20 years from now? (2J4A)
A: I don;t use the word privacy because you are able to define it anyway. Autonomy, on the otherhand, and people not messing with me in a very specific way. Transparency is the issue - wnat to know how data are used. (2J4B)
Solution - attainable but hard - need to address in an open way. Need congressional hearings, more media on it - not going ot jettsion info b/c to value but need to define what misuse is. (2J4C)
Q: 2 issues on cks and balances - 1) the extent to which you look at the merits of the data and then the methodology for analyzing info - any of these flawed you have a devestating situation. Ex, Credit Scoring. The biiger problem is the garbage data is there is systematic underreporitng of good behavior and underreporting of bad behavior. how do we scrutize data going in and coming out? Want to turn data into information not disinformation. (2J4D)
A: Do the math yourself. the private companies are not going to let oyu look over there shoulder. It is these private companoines not the public sector because they can walk the walk, talk the talk. You have these private companies positioning themselves as a privacy advocate - here the mesasage can have privacy and data - this is what they want to hear. (2J4E)