WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

WHY IT MATTERS: using phone location and big data analysis tools it is possible to track where spring break party-going students have gone after the beach closed. Amazing to see, great and powerful to predict pandemic propagation. Also another reason to fear privacy invasion...

Direct link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq2zuE3ISYU 

WHY IT MATTERS: every device being connected to the internet brings with it the possibility of remote monitoring. Here, doorbells equipped with cameras can detect who's at the door and determine who is trick or tricking at Halloween. But it can also detect burglaries, car crashes and other common neighbourhood events. Should we be concerned or feel more secured?

In the context of businesses, this can be extended to employee surveillance and possibly spying. Fun times ahead as the number of connected IOT devices is set to explode x10 in coming years.

WHY IT MATTERS: more proof that digital transformation will impact our lives in potentially dramatic ways. Here the use of public street view images of houses help predict the risk of car accident by their owner should not come as a surprise as the digitization of physical world assets provides troves of previously unavailable data for companies to mine and exploit. This quote rom the paper highlights the privacy concerns we should all have from this and other digital analysis: 

In particular, features of the house may be a proxy of ethnicity, religion or other characteristics associated with a social status of a person which are forbidden by the law to be used for any discrimination, e.g. price discrimination in certain jurisdictions. Fast development of modern data collection and computational techniques allows for unprecedented exploitation of various data of clients being not even aware of it and development of corresponding legislation in this matter seems to be outpaced.

WHY IT MATTERS: read this very detailed report that explains how political parties have used the Facebook data to create personalized messages and influence the election that led to the Brexit. Fascinating. Also read my posts on the data you leave behind - the data exhaust - that enables the creation of your digital twin: http://fmcs.digital/blog/digital-twin 

WHY IT MATTERS: this report from the ICO data privacy organization in the UK explains in their recent report how political parties and companies use your private data to create a digital twin profile to then target you during your Internet journeys with micro-targeted messages. Also read my post on the digital twin concept: http://fmcs.digital/blog/digital-twin 

WHY IT MATTERS: data that you post on Facebook or elsewhere is aggregated by political parties and retailers and governments and others to create a virtual profile of yourself - what I call the digital twin. See my post here for more on the digital twin: http://fmcs.digital/blog/digital-twin/ 

WHY IT MATTERS: this investigation on the heels of the Cambridge Analytica scandal shows how much data is being collected by political parties.

WHY IT MATTERS: I introduced the concept of a "digital twin" in a recent blog post and this article describes how Facebook uses what you do online to create part of this digital twin profile you may not be ware of.

Also read the digital twin post: http://fmcs.digital/blog/digital-twin/ 

WHY IT MATTERS: this well researched article with many links will provide hours of content to help you understand the Facebook breach. The data may surprise you both by the high accuracy that some predictive models have, and by the relatively low accuracy of other elements.

WHY IT MATTERS: Big data and Internet of things - where every device in the world is connected - has huge potential. At the same time, this enhanced traceability has downsides for privacy and security, as evidenced by this article from The Guardian. Other similar examples in the past have highlighted the possible issues: robbers get caught by police when the photos they post of their robbery includes their GPS location, or face identification cameras in China let government track individuals as they walk the street. We will have to find a solution for this in the future.

Other articles I wrote about the strava Big Data visualization are here:

2017 dataset: http://fmcs.digital/blog/where-people-go-to-play-strava-global-heatmap-aggregates-1b-activities-and-13t-data-points-to-show-where-people-run-bike-in-the-world-bigdata-maps/ 

2015 dataset: http://fmcs.digital/blog/strava-170m-ridesruns-heatmap-shows-most-popular-bike-run-trails-of-2015-with-bigdata-gps-crowdsourcing/ 

WHY IT MATTERS: would you allow an invasion of your privacy to improve your life expectancy? I assume most of us would say YES if assured that the information would remain secure and private. What technologies need to be put in place? Do we need government regulations to protect everyone equally? These are the real questions behind advances such as this one. Moreover are there solutions using blockchain technology to allow for this to become possible?

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

So many people tell me that they are not on Facebook because they want to keep their privacy. This is another proof that privacy does not exist anymore and that there is no line between online and real-world. Please all be aware and try to put into practice the tips I share during my talks on me.com and the management of your digital twin. for more, read these:

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

For everyone concerned about privacy in the digital world, the mega digital record would provide visibility into what is currently a completely opaque process. But far more reaching is the possibility to extend this audit trail to all our personal data. 

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

Big brother is watching and when it does you can gain tremendous insights into the behaviour of humans. I zoomed in on Montreal and the diagram is very clear about which run trails are most popular on the Mount Royal. On the dark side, of course, this means Strava performs some high level surveillance on us as we share our bike and run rides with their software.

Just follow the link to the 2012 report and find out what it means to cross reference different digital databases.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

Our lives are digital and we leave digital exhaust behind us everywhere we go. This paper shows what the US government uses to put together a composite picture of your digital twin. For now, they plan to use this for border crossing but in the future - 10 or 20 years down the road - what will this info be used for? Also, knowing that military and very advanced technology always makes it into the corporate world, how will this be used by corporations? 

AI and Big Data are being applied to identity verification by a startup that has received 25M in funding and is poaching employees from Google.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

AI and other techniques will provide enhance capabilities to deter theft and privacy violations. They will become essential tools in digital transformation of businesses. For example, UBER is using Onfido to verify that people are who they claim they are, thus making their service better able to curb credit card theft, and protect drivers by ensuring their passengers can be tracked is they behave inappropriately. 

A long read from a well respected psychologist on the power that Google employees have because of the amount of data the company accumulates. Must read for anyone interested in real-world examples of things that can go wrong with Big Data and data science.