Big Data and Freedom

By Siddharth Singh, 28th September, 2015

They know where we go. They know who we call. They know what we say. They know who we swipe right. They know our favourite colours. They know what we read. They know what we watch. They know what traffic violations we commit. They know how much we spend. They know our fingerprints. They even know our heartbeats.

They know a lot, and what they know is only going to increase over time.

And this has been making us very very exposed. It’s like a loss of control over some aspect of our life that we cannot properly put into words.

Adam Ozimek of ‘Modeled Behavior’ on Forbes makes a very interesting point on the implications of behavioral data collection. He argues that in the future, as more data is collected, it may “to our eyes look like serious encroachments on privacy”. However, that’s only one way to interpret it. He writes,

“In a way, this will make us much less free as we are faced with prices for many behaviors that used to be costless to us. But it will also mean that the costs that we bare for other people’s behaviors will decline and the dollar cost of government will shrink, which will make us more free in a sense.”

This is because our behaviour — thus far unmeasured — often imposes costs on others. These include “bad parenting, obesity, drug and alcohol addiction, unsafe driving, and general lack of conscientiousnes”.

More data could therefore mean more freedom, as several externalities could be internalised (i.e. those who impose costs could be made to pay for it), or at the very least, such externalities could be minimised. However, this may well be possible only if complemented by a governance framework that safeguards the misuse of such large volumes of behavioural data.

Now given that increasing amounts of data is being collected, ceteris paribus, would you be more comfortable knowing the government has more data on you, or a private entity?