{"id":106443,"date":"2014-01-18T15:43:45","date_gmt":"2014-01-18T15:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=106443"},"modified":"2014-01-18T15:43:45","modified_gmt":"2014-01-18T15:43:45","slug":"beyond-nsa-big-data-abuse-corporations-politicians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/beyond-nsa-big-data-abuse-corporations-politicians\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the NSA: What About Big Data Abuse by Corporations, Politicians?"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Nichols\u00a0<\/strong>
\nRINF Alternative News<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Taking\u00a0steps<\/a>\u00a0to end, or at the very least to constrain, the federal government\u2019s practice of storing information on the personal communications of Americans is a good thing. There is every reason to respect initiatives that seek to prevent the National Security Agency\u2019s metadata programs from making a mockery of the right to privacy outlined in the\u00a0Fourth Amendment<\/a>\u00a0to the US Constitution.<\/p>\n

But the moves that President Obama\u00a0announced Friday<\/a>\u00a0to impose more judicial oversight on federal authorities who might \u201clisten to your private phone calls, or read your emails\u201d and the steps that may be taken by Attorney General Eric Holder and intelligence officials to check and balance the NSA following the submission of proposals on March 28 ought not be seen mistaken for a restoration of privacy rights in America.<\/p>\n

What the president and his aides are\u00a0talking about<\/a>\u2013in response to revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, congressional objections and\u00a0public protests<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 are plans to place some controls on the NSA and perhaps to keep most data in \u201cprivate hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what controls will there be on those private hands?<\/p>\n

As long as we\u2019re opening a discussion about data mining, might we consider the fact that it\u2019snot just the government<\/a>\u00a0that\u2019s paying attention to our communications\u2013and to what they can reveal about our personalities, lifestyles, values, spending habits and political choices.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason the NSA has been interested in accessing the servers of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple. When you\u2019re mining, you go where the precious resources are, and technology companies have got the gold.<\/p>\n

Data is\u00a0digital gold<\/a>. Corporations know that. They\u2019re big into data mining.<\/p>\n

This data mining, and the commercial and political applications that extend from it, gets far less attention than the machinations of the NSA or other governmental intelligence agencies. Tech publications and savvy writers such as Jaron Lanier recognize these concerns. The Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the Senate Commerce Committee have taken\u00a0some tentative steps<\/a>\u00a0to address a few of the worst abuses. But that\u2019s not enough, especially when, as Fordham University\u2019s Alice E. Marwick noted in a smart\u00a0recent piece<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0The New York Review of Books<\/em>,<\/p>\n

there are equally troubling and equally opaque systems run by advertising, marketing, and data-mining firms that are far less known. Using techniques ranging from supermarket loyalty cards to targeted advertising on Facebook, private companies systematically collect very personal information, from who you are, to what you do, to what you buy. Data about your online and offline behavior are combined, analyzed, and sold to marketers, corporations, governments, and even criminals. The scope of this collection, aggregation, and brokering of information is similar to, if not larger than, that of the NSA, yet it is almost entirely unregulated and many of the activities of data-mining and digital marketing firms are not publicly known at all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Significantly, it is not just financial profit that data can yield.<\/p>\n

As Robert W. McChesney and I note in\u00a0Dollarocracy: How the Money-and-Media Election Complex is Destroying America<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(Nation Books), data is also mined by those who seek power.<\/p>\n

Political candidates, political parties, Super PACs and dark-money groups are among the most ambitious data miners around. They use data to supercharge their fund-raising, to target multimillion-dollar ad buys and to stir passions and fears at election time.<\/p>\n

Both parties do it. All major candidates do it.\u00a0Obama did it better<\/a>\u00a0than Romney in 2012, and that played a critical role in providing the president with the resources and the strategies that allowed him to easily defeat a well-funded and aggressive challenger. The Grand Old Party\u2019s response was to\u00a0begin hiring<\/a>\u00a0the best and the brightest technical talent. A recent headlineannounced<\/a>: \u201cRepublican National Committee to Build Platform to Share Voter Data.\u201d Anotherreported<\/a>: \u201cRNC Pledges $20 Million to Build Data-Sharing Operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

So campaigns are going to do more mining. And so are the billionaires who fund so-called \u201cindependent\u201d political operations. Last spring,\u00a0Politico<\/em>\u00a0announced<\/a>: \u201cKarl Rove, Koch Brothers Lead Charge to Control Republican Data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Data already drives the money-and-media election complex that is rapidly remaking American democracy into an American dollarocracy, where election campaigns are long on technical savvy but short, very short, on vision.<\/p>\n

So, give the president credit for\u00a0wading into the debate<\/a>\u00a0about how the government uses and abuses phone data. Give key members of Congress,\u00a0like Jerry Nadler<\/a>, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, credit for pointing out that what the president has proposed is \u201cnot enough\u201d to \u201csafeguard against indiscriminate, bulk surveillance of everyday Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

But then go the next step. Recognize that addressing governmental actions and abuses does not begin to restore privacy rights. For that to happen, there must be recognition that Marwick is\u00a0right to argue<\/a>: \u201cWhile closer scrutiny of the NSA is necessary and needed, we must apply equal pressure to private corporations to ensure that seemingly harmless targeted mail campaigns and advertisements do not give way to insidious and dangerous violations of personal privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that recognition must extend beyond concern regarding abusive commercial applications to include an examination of and responses to\u00a0new approaches to fund-raising and campaigning<\/a>\u00a0that have the potential to warp our politics\u2013and democracy itself.<\/p>\n

John Nichols is Washington correspondent for\u00a0The Nation<\/a>\u00a0and associate editor of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. His most recent book, co-authored with Robert W. McChesney is,\u00a0Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America<\/a><\/strong>.<\/a>\u00a0Other books written with McChesney include:\u00a0The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again<\/a><\/strong>and\u00a0Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy<\/a><\/strong>. Nichols’ other books include:\u00a0The \u201cS\u201d Word: A Short History of an American Tradition<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0Dick: The Man Who is President<\/a><\/strong>and\u00a0The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism<\/strong>.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Nichols\u00a0 RINF Alternative News\u00a0 Taking\u00a0steps\u00a0to end, or at the very least to constrain, the federal government\u2019s practice of storing information on the personal communications of Americans is a good thing. There is every reason to respect initiatives that seek to prevent the National Security Agency\u2019s metadata programs from making a mockery of the right […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":106444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-106443","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}