Reflection on Big Data Resources

So far for the Big Data project, I have watched a TED talk by Glenn Grennwald, about why privacy matters. This TED talk discusses the idea of privacy within the mass surveillance that takes place in all aspects of society. Greenwald talks about how people claim that privacy doesn’t matter, yet they have passwords and locks on their personal items or accounts. I found this interesting because usually people who claim privacy doesn’t matter, they consider themselves a person who does not need to hide anything, yet, have many security and privacy settings on all their accounts. Greenwald also brings up that all of us have things to hide. Although they might not be extreme things, they are things we would like to keep to yourself or our doctors or lawyers, we would not want them to be released through surveillance. Lastly, Greenwald talks about how mass surveillance suppresses our freedom, when we believe someone is watching us, we will conform or constrict our behavior. This idea makes me question the validity of the surveillance, since people believe they are being watched through mass surveillance, they are probably constricting their behavior, leading to the collection of false big data. Another TED talk I watched was by Chris Soghoian, regarding the features that Apple users have over Android users. Soghoian talks about how Apple encrypts their data and protects the users data from everyone beside the user – making it difficult for the government and hackers to gain that data, ultimately protecting the users from forms of surveillance. However, Android users are not as easily protected. They do not encrypt their data, so they are at risk for more surveillance compared to Apple users. Soghoian says this is becoming a “civil rights problem”, related to the price and features of each phone, that needs to be resorted. Another TED Talk I found interesting was about big data analysis developing television shows, but the way in which big data analysis can fail. Sebastian Wernicke talks about how different companies look at the big data to create new television shows, they analyze your likes dislikes, rating, sections of shows you re-watch, pause and play on, and other data related to the actions of television. However, big data does not always produce optimum results, which it should. This means that people are too reliant on big data, when it has proven to fail. Wernicke says that big data works good for dissecting a problem, taking it apart and understanding the pieces, but it is not good for putting the pieces together to form a conclusion based on those pieces. That is what your brain is for. Your brain has that ability, and people should become more reliant on their brains rather than big data. Lastly, I listen to a podcast that told viewers how to eliminate certain surveillance through Facebook, you can deny Facebook access to app activity, which takes about their input to your interest, and deny access to your location so they do not have a marker for where your Facebook activity comes from. Although somethings cannot be put on privacy settings, like your name, profile picture, cover photo, gender, and username. There are some things you can do to avoid contributing to big data, but somethings cannot be limited. Although the United Stated does not allow users to agree to big data, Europe is now going to require companies to get permission from the users to evaluate their big data. It is now become more controlled and limited in Europe for the collection of big data. Most people in the US are unaware they are contributing to big data analysis, so features similar to those in Europe should be conducted here in order for more control at the viewers discretion.