Assignment 4

Bradford Orr, Alex DiChristofano, Sayantan Kumar, Christine Kurohara, Gus Kasper, Jinlin
Zhang, Pengqiu Meng

What are the ethical issues brought up by the article?

Today, companies ranging from highly-used platforms such as Google and Facebook to
service providers such as telecom and insurance companies are harvesting user data for both their
own use and as a commodity. Customers who use a service frequently are unaware of how much
personal data is being collected, and where that data goes/what that data is used for. An increase
in data-driven decision making means that data that customers may have unintentionally
provided (such as browsing history to a telecom company). This data can then be sold to external
stakeholders, who could then use this data to discriminate against the consumer.
Both small and large firms have begun integrating the selling of user data as an integral
part of their business model. This data is then collected by consumer data brokers such as
Acxiom, Epsilon, and Merkl.

Who are the stakeholders? How are they impacted and/or what do they care about in the
process?
Large corporations make up potentially the most powerful group of stakeholders.
Specifically, companies that host platforms such as Google and Facebook benefit greatly from
knowing their consumer better, through both targeted advertisements and being able to provide a
better user experience, which generates more users. At the same time, they provide an
indispensable service to the consumer, so a company like Google is interested in getting as much
data as possible, while still growing its user base. Companies often get hold of this data to make
their policies to maximize their profit at the expense of the customer.
Consumers are trying to navigate an online world that is created to track them. At the
same time, even the most careful consumer will end up generating a data footprint. The average
consumer will need to use these data-generating services, so they are in a fairly powerless
position to negotiate with the larger companies.
The government, who should have the ability to regulate some of these companies, is in
many ways accountable to the large corporations whose goal it is to gather user data. Since this is
the way that the political system is set up, it is not necessarily in the best interest of politicians to
protect the individual consumer. Even if the government wanted to take future preventative
measures, since this system of monetized data collection has gone on for so long, it is difficult to
even conceptualize how much of a person’s data is “owned” by the collective companies of the
world.

What are the potential root causes of the issues?

One of the main issues is the power and control multinational corporations that
participate in this surveillance. Companies are driven to maximize profit. In order to do this, they
want to target advertising, which is done best by collecting personal data, even if such an action
is considered to be exploitative.
The implementation of neoliberal policies (essentially policies that have intensified
laissez-faire capitalism, especially the exploitative parts of it) in the 1980s have given
government responsibilities to corporations and (at least) the U.S. government has also removed
many regulations on corporations and implemented policies that have given them more power.
Some of the main effects of neoliberalism that’s relevant to this article is the commodification of
information and the assignment of value to people based on their profitability. Of course, to
assign people value, surveillance is necessary to assess how much profit can be extracted from
someone.
Another trend that has contributed is the conglomeration of multinational companies.
This results in power and resources being concentrated around a few very large companies and
consequently gives big corporations like Google and Facebook the ability to create technologies
that can efficiently extract information from individuals for profit.
How could you or someone you know be impacted by an issue to similar to those brought
by the article?
Most obviously, corporations could use my information to bombard me with
advertisements that are likely to interest me. This will likely cause me to spend money at a
higher rate than I otherwise would, which would severely harm me if I already had poor
spending habits.
Companies could also extort me. For example, a health insurance company could
purchase individuals’ consumption data from pharmaceutical companies. This would in turn
cause the insurance company to drive up our rates, as they could see this behavior as a sign of
poorer health. This could negatively impact millions of people who already suffer from crippling
debt as a result of the high insurance rates.
Finally, corporate surveillance could be used to target individuals whose behavior is
deemed highly influenceable. Lobbies could purchase individuals’ data from many different
platforms in order to garner information as to where they might stand politically. If they find that
an individual is politically central and prone to opinion change, these Lobbies could target an
individual, and pay social media platforms to show biased advertisements on their feed. This is
bad for the individual, as they would be less likely to support the candidate/party that they would
have independently supported.

What are the impacts of the issues to the society?

This could impact behavior on the individual level. This could change/negatively
reinforce people’s opinions, which leads to people not acting in their own self interest. On a
societal level, this could (and perhaps is) exacerbating existing inequalities, and depending on
how the information is used, disenfranchise certain people. In terms of equality, the kind of AI
system that classifies people based on search histories will restrict opportunities to only specific
targets. For example, for those kids whose parents emphasizing on education, they can easily be
exposed to education-related online resources, which lead to a possible result that advertisements
like scholarship opportunities are only pushed to those kids. Therefore, children from low-level
education could miss those information. People keep saying that we live in an age of information
explosion, however, ironically, younger generations might be filtered out due to information
explosion. Consumers are important for merchant companies because they pursuit revenues, but
younger generations are vital since they are the future.
The individuals will no longer have privacy anymore. Both online selling companies such
as Amazon and local markets such as Walmart will know the individuals preference and
consumption level by analyzing the purchase history and browsing history, then the data will be
used for big data processing to make the best recommendation items by big data processing.
Networking company such as Facebook will take all individuals interpersonal relationships for
the networking recommendation system. Individuals will not have privacy, all their actions will
be data that used for analyzation. However, those actions will make individuals take lesser time
to find the perfect item to buy, or find friends you didn't follow on the internet. It will make
individuals more “comfort” if they are willing to exchange privacy with it. But, the individuals
did not have a choice, their data will be used even if they do not want to.

Any other things you find important/interesting to discuss.

The idea of data as an asset raises a number of legal and market concerns. Specifically
this raises concerns about the ​ownership​ of data. For example if a consumer allows a corporation
to use his/her data does this allowance extend to 3rd part buyers? On the chance that it does, do
those 3rd party buyers need permission again to sell it. It is unclear how much ownership a
consumer has. Additionally a clearer distinction must be made between public information and
private information. At a base level it can be stated that a consumer has a right to his/her private
data (SSN, Name, Credit Card Number, Medical history, etc.) but anytime a citizen acts in the
market he is producing some amount of data. How much of this data really belongs to the
consumer? For example if a consumer makes a purchase at Target, can he compel data to wipe
any information about himself and the purchase? Even if Target is limited to only keeping his
name, this still incurs a great amount of info about the consumer. They know where he was
located at a specific point in time. If he makes multiple purchases they can begin to build a
profile about this customer. Additionally all of this information are things that Target can make
an argument that they should have.
This also raises questions about competition, especially around the idea of startups and
monopolies. For example, Google partnered with the government to obtain GIS information to
build their ubiquitous ‘Maps’ application. Even today many map applications are built on top of
Google maps. This raises the question of how should large ‘public’ information be handled. Even
if the information is public it might be excessive or impossible for the government to give this
information multiple times to different startups. To put this in perspective of personal data,
certain companies have a great amount of data on consumers that can make it difficult for
consumers to switch products. For example, a consumer might be unwilling to switch from
Facebook to an alternative service because so much of their data is on Facebook. This type of
thing might prevent new companies from gaining market share which could lead to monopolies
which could have negative impacts on consumers. In addition to this, this raises the idea that a
company could become a monopoly by purchasing a company with certain data assets.

Proposed Approach:
Our approach is to generate massive awareness across the country about how their data is
being exploited. We hope that this awareness (and potentially fear) will inspire individual action
and protest (from consumers leaving platforms to consumers pressuring the government for
additional regulation).
Our solution, while potentially ethically problematic, is to create a large institute who
purchases available data from companies, and attempts to try and track and create a digital
footprint of people in power, and then publish that data in news sources online. For instance, it
has been shown that through purchasable data, a mayor can be tracked throughout their day.
Stories like this in the news will not only generate awareness, but put tangible pressure on
politicians to make change that will protect them.
The consumer will read about the effects of this tracking and data collection, and ideally
feel some justifiable worries. Additionally, the politicians (whose behavior is exposed) will feel
pressure to protect themselves. Based on this drive for self-preservation, the politicians will put
pressure on companies to regulate the data that is for sale.
Obviously there are many ethical issues with the publishing of user behavior in the public
sphere. We target politicians and CEOs of companies specifically in order to try and only hurt
those who have the power to make the change in the system. Also, there may be legal
ramifications for this type of behavior. This might be something that the ACLU would be willing
to fund and legally support.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location-data-privacy-apps.html