Big Data

I don't discuss politics here but the recent revelations about how the NSA in the US is grabbing data on everyone in the universe is chilling.  First we learned the NSA grabbed the metadata from all Verizon customers.  Then it came out that AT&T and T-Mobile customers were also targeted.  Some apologist said it's only metadata, it's not like they were listening to your calls or anything, so no biggie, right?  Well, here's just one of the things you can do with metadata—push play and follow a German Green politician over six months.  With only four metadata points you can determine the age, race, political persuasion, vices or illicit activities of anyone.

According to the NSA whistle blower who spilled the beans on all this:

“Aggregated metadata can be more revealing than content. It’s very important to realize that when an entity collects information about you that includes locations, bank transactions, credit card transactions, travel plans, EZPass on and off tollways; all of that that can be time-lined. To track you day to day to the point where people can get insight into your intentions and what you’re going to do next. It is difficult to get that from content unless you exploit every piece, and even then a lot of content is worthless.”

The next day, we learned that NSA also grabbed all the audio, video chats, photographs, email, documents from Google, Facebook, Youtube, Skype, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, AOL, PalTalk (you really didn't think those free email accounts were risk-free did you?).  That's from every man, woman, and child in the US (and likely Canada and the UK) who uses the Internet.  Every. Single. One.  And they compiled all this using a program called PRISM.  Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook et. al. are falling over themselves to say they never gave "direct" access to their servers, but that sounds like legal ass-covering to me, and that they have never heard of PRISM.  Well, they have now.  

The excuse for all this, they say, is it's needed to prevent terrorist attacks (I'm not sure how spying on innocents accomplishes that goal, but that's another story).  My point is that despite the ever-increasing amount of data manipulated, modeled, and processed by computer geniuses, mathematicians, secret agents and WOPR-like computers, it hasn't prevented any attack, like the Boston Bombing.  One anonymous government source said that PRISM foiled a 2009 NYC subway bombing plot, but it is becoming clear that old fashioned police work by Scotland Yard cracked the case.  It has done nothing. 

Now some hack will then chime in to say “If you have done nothing wrong you really have nothing to worry about”—wait for it, this kind of comment is coming soon.  Besides deserving a pie in the face, that is total bullshit: you may be innocent of a crime, but that doesn't mean you won't get picked up for it. If revenue collectors can destroy an innocent person's life—ruined finances, career, and reputation—just imagine what would happen if the Feds kick in your door and falsely accuse you of plotting some heinous act because of what some algorithms spewed out. And you have no recourse. 

What's worse, the more data it compiles and analyzes, the greater the chance of false positives. You do NOT want to be a false positive. 

What's this got to do with advertising?  Plenty. What's coming is likely a strict curtailment of personal data collection by government that will surely affect what companies like Google and Facebook collect and sell.  It will also likely affect how much and for how long companies hold customer data.  If I was a big data aggregator or marketer, I'd prepare for some big changes to my business model.