Time for a Data Code of Ethics?
About a week and a half ago, Australian university student Nathan Ruser identified that fitness app Strava’s “heatmap” feature was casually exposing the locations of dozens of secret military bases, installations, and regular patrol routes.
Oops.
Turns out that this is not an ideal development for things like military security and top secret three-letter agency activities. The fallout has climbed all the way to the top of the Pentagon, with Defense Secretary James Mattis now considering banning personal cellphones at the Pentagon building.
Strava, for its part, has published “A Letter to the Strava Community” stating that they will work with military officials and internally to ensure that those with “bad intent” cannot abuse the heatmap feature. At the same time, the heatmap remains active, with highlighted military installations still unobscured.
Now, per reporting from The Verge, Strava has disabled the feature that allowed users to add new segments — the publicly trackable zones that caused the military bases to highlight in the first place.
Will this be enough to quell data privacy concerns? Given that I just checked in on two very obvious military airstrips in Yemen, I doubt it. Data visualization is a powerful tool, but has the capability to endanger lives and create massive privacy concerns.
Maybe it’s time for a Data Code of Ethics, similar to the one proposed by Harvard Business School Professor Jeffrey F. Rayport. Dr. Rayport proposes a world where companies consent to agree to:
- Clarity on Practices
- Simplicity of Settings
- Privacy by Design
- Exchange of Value
Dr. Rayport’s proposal is nearly seven years old at this point, but we can’t help but think that a little more emphasis on Clarity of Practices and Privacy by Design in Strava’s heatmap would have maybe diminished the threat of someone being able to identify “top secret US military installations” over Twitter.
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