Amazon has a patent to keep you from comparison shopping while you’re in its stores; Washington Post, June 16, 2017

rian Fung, Washington Post; Amazon has a patent to keep you from comparison shopping while you’re in its stores

"Amazon was awarded a patent May 30 that could help it choke off a common issue faced by many physical stores: Customers’ use of smartphones to compare prices even as they walk around a shop. The phenomenon, often known as mobile “window shopping,” has contributed to a worrisome decline for traditional retailers.

But Amazon now has the technology to prevent that type of behavior when customers enter any of its physical stores and log onto the WiFi networks there. Titled “Physical Store Online Shopping Control,” Amazon’s patent describes a system that can identify a customer’s Internet traffic and sense when the smartphone user is trying to access a competitor’s website. (Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos is also the owner of The Washington Post.)...

As Amazon increasingly bridges the online-physical divide, regulators should be on the lookout for potentially anti-competitive behavior, said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy.

“Amazon knows younger consumers increasingly want home delivery of grocery products and online ordering. But there are huge privacy issues,” he said. “Amazon has created a largely stealth Big Data digital apparatus that has not gotten the scrutiny it requires.”

Privacy Concerns Over DNA Tests That Help Discover Your Roots; NBC5.com, June 16, 2017

Wayne Carter, NBC5.com; Privacy Concerns Over DNA Tests That Help Discover Your Roots

"For [Larry] Guernsey his curiosity twisted to suspicion once he read the fine print. To proceed, he'd have to give ancestry a "perpetual, royalty-free worldwide transferable license" to use his DNA.

"That entire phrase: 'perpetual royalty-free worldwide transferable,' it sounds like they have left it open to do anything they want with it," Guernsey said.

He was concerned the "transferable license" could put his family's DNA in the hands of an insurance company that could later deny coverage.

"That's not a crazy worry," said Stanford University law professor Hank Greely.

Greely teaches and writes books about the intersection of bio-tech and the law."

The Department of Knowing All About You; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 11, 2017

James Bamford, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; The Department of Knowing All About You

"For decades, from the first World Trade Center bombing to 9/​11 to the recent Syrian poison gas attack, U.S. intelligence agencies have consistently been caught off guard, despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent on spies, eavesdroppers and satellites. IARPA’s answer is “anticipatory intelligence,” predicting the crime or event before it happens.

Like a scene from “Minority Report,” the 2002 film in which criminals are caught and punished by “precrime” police before they can commit their deeds, IARPA hopes to find terrorists, hackers and even protesters before they act. The group is devising robotic machines that can find virtually everything about everyone and issue automatic “precrime” alerts.

That’s the idea behind the agency’s Open Source Indicators (OSI) program: Build powerful automated computers, armed with artificial intelligence, specialized algorithms and machine learning, capable of cataloging the lives of everyone everywhere, 24/​7. Tapping real-time into tens of thousands of different data streams — every Facebook post, tweet and YouTube video; every tollbooth tag number; every GPS download, web search and news feed; every street camera video; every restaurant reservation on Open Table — largely eliminates surprise from the intelligence equation. To IARPA, the bigger the data, the fewer and smaller the surprises."

Is Privacy Still a Big Deal Today?; Knowledge@Wharton, May 25, 2017

Kartik Hosanagar, and Tai Bendit, Knowledge@Wharton; 

Is Privacy Still a Big Deal Today?

"Americans value their privacy, but they are also resigned to giving up their personal data in order to transact with a company. Is there a better way for both sides to get what they want? This opinion piece by Kartik Hosanagar (@khosanagar) and Tai Bendit examines that question. Hosanagar is a professor of technology and digital business at Wharton. He was previously a cofounder of online marketing firm Yodle Inc. Bendit is a senior at Wharton studying economics with a concentration in operations, information, and decisions. He is joining LinkedIn as a business strategy and analytics analyst.

A version of this article was previously published on LinkedIn."

Senate votes to kill privacy rules meant to protect people's sensitive data from their Internet providers; Los Angeles Times, March 23, 2017

Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times; Senate votes to kill privacy rules meant to protect people's sensitive data from their Internet providers

"The rules, which have not yet gone into effect, require AT&T Inc., Charter Communications Inc., Comcast Corp. and other broadband providers to get customer permission before using or sharing sensitive personal data, such as Web browsing or app usage history and the geographic trail of mobile devices.

Companies use consumer data to target advertising. Privacy advocates worry that Internet service providers are assembling detailed dossiers on their customers without their consent...

Republicans and broadband companies opposed the rules because they imposed tougher restrictions on high-speed Internet providers than on websites and social networks, which also collect and use such data."

That Health Tracker Could Cost You; Bloomberg, February 23, 2017

Cathy O'Neil, Bloomberg; 

That Health Tracker Could Cost You

"Say, for example, left-handed people with vegetarian diets prove more likely to require expensive medical treatments. Insurance companies might then start charging higher premiums to people with similar profiles -- that is, to those the algorithm has tagged as potentially costly. Granted, the Affordable Care Act currently prohibits such discrimination. But that could change if Donald Trump fulfills his promise to repeal the law.

Think about what that means for insurance...

If we're not careful, pretty soon it’ll be almost like there's no insurance at all."

Second Internet of Things National Institute; American Bar Association, Washington, DC, May 10-11, 2017

Second Internet of Things National Institute

"A game-changer has emerged for businesses, policymakers, and lawyers, and it's called the "Internet of Things" (IoT). It's one of the most transformative and fast-paced technology developments in recent years. Billions of vehicles, buildings, process control devices, wearables, medical devices, drones, consumer/business products, mobile phones, tablets, and other "smart" objects are wirelessly connecting to, and communicating with, each other - and raising unprecedented legal and liability issues.

Recognized as a top new law practice area, and with global spending projected to hit $1.7 trillion by 2020, IoT will require businesses, policymakers, and lawyers (M&A, IP, competition, litigation, health law, IT/outsourcing, and privacy/cybersecurity) to identify and address the escalating legal risks of doing business in a connected world. Join us in Washington, D.C., on May 10 - 11, 2017, for our second IoT National Institute, which will feature:

Overviews and demos of the powerful technology driving the legal and liability issues

Practical guidance and the latest insights on the product liability, mass tort, big data, privacy, data security, intellectual property, cloud, and regulatory issues raised by IoT

Dynamic new additions: a mock trial, a tabletop exercise, a corporate counsel roundtable, and niche issue mini-updates.

Two full days of CLE credit (including ethics credit), plus two breakfasts, two lunches (with keynote speakers), and a cocktail reception.

Our distinguished faculty includes prominent legal and technical experts and thought-leaders from companies, government entities, universities, think-tanks, advocacy organizations, and private practice. Organized by the American Bar Association's Section of Science & Technology Law, the IoT National Institute offers an unparalleled learning and networking opportunity. With billions of devices and trillions of dollars in spending, IoT is a rapidly growing market that everyone wants to get in on."

How statistics lost their power – and why we should fear what comes next; Guardian, 1/19/17

William Davies, Guardian; How statistics lost their power – and why we should fear what comes next

"The question to be taken more seriously, now that numbers are being constantly generated behind our backs and beyond our knowledge, is where the crisis of statistics leaves representative democracy.

On the one hand, it is worth recognising the capacity of long-standing political institutions to fight back. Just as “sharing economy” platforms such as Uber and Airbnb have recently been thwarted by legal rulings (Uber being compelled to recognise drivers as employees, Airbnb being banned altogether by some municipal authorities), privacy and human rights law represents a potential obstacle to the extension of data analytics. What is less clear is how the benefits of digital analytics might ever be offered to the public, in the way that many statistical data sets are. Bodies such as the Open Data Institute, co-founded by Tim Berners-Lee, campaign to make data publicly available, but have little leverage over the corporations where so much of our data now accumulates. Statistics began life as a tool through which the state could view society, but gradually developed into something that academics, civic reformers and businesses had a stake in. But for many data analytics firms, secrecy surrounding methods and sources of data is a competitive advantage that they will not give up voluntarily.

A post-statistical society is a potentially frightening proposition, not because it would lack any forms of truth or expertise altogether, but because it would drastically privatise them. Statistics are one of many pillars of liberalism, indeed of Enlightenment. The experts who produce and use them have become painted as arrogant and oblivious to the emotional and local dimensions of politics. No doubt there are ways in which data collection could be adapted to reflect lived experiences better. But the battle that will need to be waged in the long term is not between an elite-led politics of facts versus a populist politics of feeling. It is between those still committed to public knowledge and public argument and those who profit from the ongoing disintegration of those things."

The Higher Ed Learning Revolution: Tracking Each Student's Every Move; NPR, 1/11/17

Eric Westervelt, NPR; 

The Higher Ed Learning Revolution: Tracking Each Student's Every Move

"Another physicist-turned-education-innovator (is there something in the physics lab water?) named Timothy McKay sees great promise in "learning analytics" — using big data and research to improve teaching and learning.

McKay, a professor of physics, astronomy and education at the University of Michigan argues in a recent white paper, that higher ed needs to "break down the perceived divide between research and practice."

There are privacy and ethical concerns, of course, which in turn has prompted fledgling codes of conduct to spring up.

I reached out to Professor McKay, who also heads Michigan's Digital Innovation Greenhouse, to dig deeper on how learning analytics work in higher ed."

There’s No Such Thing as Innocuous Personal Data; Slate, 8/8/16

Elizabeth Weingarten, Slate; There’s No Such Thing as Innocuous Personal Data:

"The way you walk can be as unique as your fingerprint; a couple of studies show that gait can help verify the identity of smartphone users. And gait can also predict whether someone is at risk for dementia. Seemingly useless pieces of data may let experts deduce or predict certain behaviors or conditions now, but the big insights will come in the next few years, when companies and consumers are able to view a tapestry of different individual data points and contrast them with data across the entire population. That’s when, according to a recent report from Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, we’ll be able to “gain deep insight into human emotional experiences.”

But it’s the data that you’re creating now that will fuel those insights. Far from meaningless, it’s the foundation of what you (and everyone else) may be able to learn about your future self."

Uncle Sam Wants You — Or at Least Your Genetic and Lifestyle Information; New York Times, 7/23/16

Robert Pear, New York Times; Uncle Sam Wants You — Or at Least Your Genetic and Lifestyle Information:

"People can sign up through academic medical centers at Columbia University, Northwestern University in Illinois, the University of Arizona and the University of Pittsburgh, each of which is working with local partners. Columbia, for example, is collaborating with NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Harlem Hospital and Weill Cornell Medicine.

Participants will be recruited to reflect the geographic, racial, ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of the nation. To help achieve that goal, officials have enlisted community health centers, where more than 90 percent of patients have annual incomes less than twice the poverty level (less than $23,760 for an individual). About one-third of health center patients are Latinos, and about one-fourth are African-Americans.

Officials said they wanted patients to be partners in the research, not just “human subjects.” To that end, patients will have access to all the information about themselves, including laboratory and genetic test results. Doctors could eventually use the data to shape treatment for an individual patient, rather than using standard treatments that may not work for everyone. Patients will help guide the research, sitting on its steering committee and advisory board."

Can Big Data Help Head Off Police Misconduct?; NPR, 7/19/16

NPR Staff; Can Big Data Help Head Off Police Misconduct? :

"Big Data has been considered an essential tool for tech companies and political campaigns. Now, someone who has handled data analytics at the highest levels in both of those worlds sees promise for it in policing, education and city services.

For example, data can show that a police officer who has been under stress after responding to cases of domestic abuse or suicide may be at higher risk of a negative interaction with the public, data scientist Rayid Ghani says.

Ghani, the chief data scientist for President Obama's re-election campaign in 2012, is now director of the Center for Data Science and Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He spoke to NPR's Ari Shapiro about finding ways to use data analytics in fields where it's not so common, like policing and city services."

Analytics key to agencies in big data explosion; FedScoop, 3/10/16

Billy Mitchell, FedScoop; Analytics key to agencies in big data explosion:

Lots of leading edge info and thought-provoking commentary from an impressive array of speakers at FedScoop and Hitachi's 3/10/16 Social Innovation Summit I attended at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Good overview of Summit by FedScoop's Billy Mitchell:

"The federal government has seen an explosion of data at its disposal and has needed powerful analytics tools to put it to use, federal IT officials and industry executives said.

A single statistic drove the bulk of the conversation at Thursday’s Hitachi Data Systems Social Innovation Summit, produced by FedScoop: By 2020, analysts predict there will be more than 30 billion network-connected digital devices globally, all producing unprecedented volumes of data in a concept called the Internet of Things.

“Those devices, whether it be the phones we use, the cars we drive in, the medical devices used to keep us healthy, the buildings we work in, the ships and airplanes that protect our country, they’re all generating data, and it’s a question of how do we take that data and really put it to use?” said Mike Tanner, president and CEO of federal for Hitachi Data Systems...

While that data brings with it endless opportunities, it also complicates things, particularly because humans alone are unable to do much with such massive data sets."

Obama Says People Who Give Genetic Samples for Research Should Own the Data; Slate.com, 2/26/16

Lily Hay Newman, Slate.com; Obama Says People Who Give Genetic Samples for Research Should Own the Data:

"On Thursday the White House held a summit to discuss progress on its Precision Medicine Initiative, first announced last year. The program has consistently emphasized that privacy and security are among its priorities when it comes to research data, but on Thursday President Barack Obama waded deeper into a debate about rights and ownership when subjects contribute their genetic information to studies.

But amid hopeful suggestions about how this data could improve medicine in the future, Obama pointed to an inherent tension in collecting the data.

"It requires, first of all, us understanding who owns the data," Obama said. "And I would like to think that if somebody does a test on me or my genes, that that's mine. But that's not always how we define these issues, right? So there’s some legal issues involved.""

Sara Fine Institute presents: Christine Borgman, "Big Data, Open Data, and Scholarship": Mon Feb 29th 3.00pm - 5.00pm, University of Pittsburgh

Sara Fine Institute presents: Christine Borgman, "Big Data, Open Data, and Scholarship" :

"Monday Feb 29th 3.00pm - 5.00pm

University Club, Ballroom A, 123 University Pl, Pittsburgh, PA 15260

"Big Data, Open Data, and Scholarship"

by Christine L. Borgman

Distinguished Professor & Presidential Chair in Information Studies

University of California, Los Angeles

Scholars gathered data long before the emergence of books, journals, libraries, publishers, or the Internet. Until recently, data were considered part of the process of scholarship, essential but largely invisible. In the “big data” era, the products of these research processes have become valuable objects in themselves to be captured, shared, reused, and sustained for the long term. Data also has become contentious intellectual property to be protected, whether for proprietary, confidentiality, competition, or other reasons. Public policy leans toward open access to research data, but rarely with the public investment necessary to sustain access. Enthusiasm for big data is obscuring the complexity and diversity of data in scholarship and the challenges for stewardship. Data practices are local, varying from field to field, individual to individual, and country to country. This talk will explore the stakes and stakeholders in research data and implications for policy and practice.

Join us Feb. 29, 2016 at 3pm at the University of Pittsburgh’s University Club (Ballroom A). This event is free to attend and no RSVP is required. A reception will follow."

Balancing Benefits and Risks of Immortal Data Participants’ Views of Open Consent in the Personal Genome Project; Hastings Center Report, 12/17/15

Oscar A. Zarate, Julia Green Brody, Phil Brown, Monica D. Ramirez-Andreotta, Laura Perovich andJacob Matz, Hastings Center Report; Balancing Benefits and Risks of Immortal Data: Participants’ Views of Open Consent in the Personal Genome Project:

"Abstract

An individual's health, genetic, or environmental-exposure data, placed in an online repository, creates a valuable shared resource that can accelerate biomedical research and even open opportunities for crowd-sourcing discoveries by members of the public. But these data become “immortalized” in ways that may create lasting risk as well as benefit. Once shared on the Internet, the data are difficult or impossible to redact, and identities may be revealed by a process called data linkage, in which online data sets are matched to each other. Reidentification (re-ID), the process of associating an individual's name with data that were considered deidentified, poses risks such as insurance or employment discrimination, social stigma, and breach of the promises often made in informed-consent documents. At the same time, re-ID poses risks to researchers and indeed to the future of science, should re-ID end up undermining the trust and participation of potential research participants.

The ethical challenges of online data sharing are heightened as so-called big data becomes an increasingly important research tool and driver of new research structures. Big data is shifting research to include large numbers of researchers and institutions as well as large numbers of participants providing diverse types of data, so the participants’ consent relationship is no longer with a person or even a research institution. In addition, consent is further transformed because big data analysis often begins with descriptive inquiry and generation of a hypothesis, and the research questions cannot be clearly defined at the outset and may be unforeseeable over the long term. In this article, we consider how expanded data sharing poses new challenges, illustrated by genomics and the transition to new models of consent. We draw on the experiences of participants in an open data platform—the Personal Genome Project—to allow study participants to contribute their voices to inform ethical consent practices and protocol reviews for big-data research."

Cops will adapt big data platform to secure Super Bowl; FedScoop.com, 2/5/16

Alex Koma, FedScoop.com; Cops will adapt big data platform to secure Super Bowl:

"Law enforcement agents and first responders in Northern California are turning to some software that harnesses the power of data to help keep fans safe at the Super Bowl, one of the most daunting security challenges of the year.

The state first started using the program last year — known as the “California Common Operating Picture” and powered by Haystax Technology’s “Constellation” analytics platform — and now law enforcement agencies of all shapes and sizes are preparing to use it to collect thousands of pieces of data about potential threats ahead of the big matchup in Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium.

In a briefing here at Haystax’s headquarters, Chief Technology Officer Bryan Ware laid out just how federal, state and local agents across the region have been using the system to keep a close eye on potential trouble makers and targets ahead of the Super Bowl, and how 13 different monitoring centers run by various government agencies will use it the night of the game to stay ahead of any security concerns."

FTC warns companies that ‘big data’ comes with the potential for big problems; Washington Post, 1/7/16

Andrea Peterson, Washington Post; FTC warns companies that ‘big data’ comes with the potential for big problems:

"Companies are tracking more data about consumers than ever. Practically every click you make online creates new records in some distant database, and your real world actions, too, can increasingly be tracked through your mobile phone or new commercial surveillance advances.

But the Federal Trade Commission, one of the government's chief privacy watchdogs, just warned companies to think twice about how they use those vast data troves.

The agency on Wednesday released a new report that advises companies on how to avoid hurting the most vulnerable as they push further into the booming "big data" economy."

Justices’ Opinions Grow in Size, Accessibility and Testiness, Study Finds; New York Times, 5/4/15

Adam Liptak, New York Times; Justices’ Opinions Grow in Size, Accessibility and Testiness, Study Finds:

"The court used to be a more decorous institution. A new computer analysis of about 25,000 Supreme Court opinions from 1791 to 2008 identified three trends that have transformed the court’s tone. The justices’ opinions, the study found, have become longer, easier to understand — and grumpier.

The judicial-ethics decision was a good example of all three trends. It was simultaneously sprawling, accessible and testy...

The new study, to be published next year in the Washington University Law Review, is the work of Daniel Rockmore and Keith Carlson, computer scientists at Dartmouth College, and Michael A. Livermore, a law professor at the University of Virginia. It is part of a cottage industry of quantitative analysis of Supreme Court opinions using linguistic software.

The era of big data has yielded some uncontroversial findings about the Supreme Court."

Privacy matters: The RadioShack outcry offers a consumer lesson; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/17/15

Editorial Board, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Privacy matters: The RadioShack outcry offers a consumer lesson:

In its recent bankruptcy filings, the troubled electronics retailer listed customer information among its assets up for auction, including 13 million email addresses and 65 million physical addresses in its database. But outrage ensued from attorneys general in 25 states, including Pennsylvania, so RadioShack changed course and announced it would exclude the data from this week’s sale of 1,700 stores to Standard General...

Stores increasingly gather information on their customers, either by asking for it outright at checkout or, more deviously, by offering a chance to win a prize if they evaluate their service online. Consumers do so willingly, but often without thinking of what happens to the data, or how it can multiply...

However, the legal quandaries presented in the era of Big Data are just beginning, as are the potential abuses."