Consider the new field of “digital phenotyping,” whose practitioners use data from a person’s social media activity, phone use, and other digital exhaust to craft a picture of your physical health and mental well- being. As the New York Times recently noted , digital phenotyping is hardly an exact science. “If a sociable person suddenly stopped texting friends, for instance, it might indicate that he or she had become depressed,” the Times reported. Or it could just mean they’d gone on vacation, or succumbed to their significant other’s entreaties to put their phones away. But that hasn’t stopped technology companies from wading into people’s lives – sometimes literally. Facebook is using artificial intelligence “to scan posts and live video streams on its social network for signs of possible suicidal thoughts. If the system detects certain language patterns,” the Times notes, “it may assign a certain algorithmic score to the post and alert a Facebook review team” which then contacts the person (or, in some cases, calls the police). Big Brother might not be watching, but Big Tech is. Some observers have praised these efforts by tech companies, arguing that they serve an important community function, kind of like a concerned (albeit virtual) neighbor. Perhaps. But a larger question remains unaddressed: What does the future of privacy and freedom look like in a world where much of everyday life – including private life – is performed online and always monitored? Already, for many people today, their most deeply intimate relationship – at least if judged by time spent and care and attention lavished – is with their smartphone. We talk with them and to them; we play games and buy things
“Every Chinese citizen receives a literal, numeric index of their trustworthiness and virtue, and this index unlocks, well, everything. In principle, anyway, this one number will determine the opportunities citizens are offered, the freedoms they enjoy, and the privileges they are granted.” Given the many U.S. agencies (FBI, National Security Agency, Homeland Security, local law enforcement) that have monitoring and surveillance capabilities, should Americans fear a future of citizen-scoring akin to the one already practiced in China? As more and more people seek attention in a crowded online universe, the bar for normal Not exactly. Unlike in China, in the U.S., legal protections exist that theoretically protect Americans from overreach by government agencies intent on surveillance. But Americans face a different and potentially larger long-term threat, one ushered in by our era of on-demand digital convenience: the many private companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook that gather masses of information about us with little to no oversight regarding what they can do with it. In other words, you should worry less about the government spying on you than you should about Fitbit eventually selling your pedometer data to a major health insurance company. attention-seeking will continue to be raised.
56 March 2018
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