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posted by LaminatorX on Monday April 28 2014, @04:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the Biased-Sample dept.

The white house will release a report next week on the potential for big data to discriminate by race, religion, income or other criteria. The report reviews the adequacy of existing privacy laws and regulations in the era of online data collection. The review is led by Obama's senior counselor, John Podesta, who will outline concerns about whether methods used for commercial applications may be inherently vulnerable to inadvertent discrimination.

A great example comes from an app called "Street Bump", produced by the Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics in Boston, that detects pot-holes using sensors in smartphones while you drive, which inadvertently directed repair crews to wealthier neighborhoods, because that's where people were more likely to carry smartphones and download the app. John said "It's easy to imagine how big data technology, if used to cross legal lines that we have been careful to set, could end up reinforcing existing inequities in housing, credit, employment, health, and education."

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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by RobotMonster on Monday April 28 2014, @04:51PM

    by RobotMonster (130) on Monday April 28 2014, @04:51PM (#37277) Journal

    Duh. What's the point of data collection if you can't use it to discriminate?
    Think of the childr^H^H^H^H^H insurance companies!

    • (Score: 2) by davester666 on Monday April 28 2014, @05:45PM

      by davester666 (155) on Monday April 28 2014, @05:45PM (#37304)

      Yes, the NSA is worried it's not getting enough data from the non-Facebook people...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28 2014, @04:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28 2014, @04:58PM (#37280)

    I my experience even poor people tend to have smartphones these days.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday April 28 2014, @05:34PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 28 2014, @05:34PM (#37299) Journal

      I my experience even poor people tend to have smartphones these days.

      In my experience, the rich people don't carry a smartphone: they hire secretaries for that.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 1) by zsau on Tuesday April 29 2014, @12:53AM

      by zsau (2642) on Tuesday April 29 2014, @12:53AM (#37454)

      Do the poor people have smart phones that they can load apps and have them continuously running, connecting to the internet and uploading and downloading data? or have they got prepaid smart phones that frequently spend weeks or months without credit?

      Are these kinds of apps advertised in places when poor people are likely to hear about them, or only in places that rich people access?

  • (Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Monday April 28 2014, @05:07PM

    by Horse With Stripes (577) on Monday April 28 2014, @05:07PM (#37287)

    Should we really be worrying about the discrimination that's not inadvertent first? You know, the everyday stuff, the institutional stuff, the wink-and-a-nod stuff?

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by starcraftsicko on Monday April 28 2014, @05:25PM

      by starcraftsicko (2821) on Monday April 28 2014, @05:25PM (#37296) Journal

      The 'wink and nod' stuff, IME, dies off, albeit more slowly than we'd like, once the legal underpinning for it vanishes. Sometimes the opportunity cost is too high and sometimes there is no opportunity at all... and things do change.

      The thing that interests me most about things like this is their potential to develop into a real and useful electronic privacy initiatives. Once we establish that data that correlates well with 'race' is something that we don't want the data-brokers to be able to use or trade about, we might extent the expectations to other things...

      Unnecessary overprotection of 'race' data seems like a low price to pay for privacy otherwise.

      --
      This post was created with recycled electrons.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28 2014, @06:25PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28 2014, @06:25PM (#37321)

      We should be worrying about all of it.

      Since explicit, intentional discrimination is already socially unacceptable, it's declined a lot. The real battle is now in subconscious, inadvertent discrimination - discrimination that you'd never do, if you only knew you were doing it.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday April 28 2014, @05:29PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 28 2014, @05:29PM (#37297)

    Its not exactly a drone strike against another wedding party, right? And this news release is the end of the line? So its actually in support of data analysis, via shutting down discussion/complaint with "we're not doing nothing, we wrote a report"

    So the message to the industry is keep doing what you're doing, you're on the right path, if you overstep we might have to release another report...

    Another way to look at it is a call for extortion. Some campaign contributions could make this whole problem for the companies just go away, after all its just a report.

    So the true meaning of this news release is things are likely to get much worse, not better?

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 29 2014, @02:02AM

      by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday April 29 2014, @02:02AM (#37465) Journal

      Aha.. disguised call for "donations" to political entities. Also called BRIBES.
       

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by GlennC on Monday April 28 2014, @06:45PM

    by GlennC (3656) on Monday April 28 2014, @06:45PM (#37334)

    Somehow I imagine that their real worry isn't that the data is being used to discriminate, but that the public will be shown that the data is being used to discriminate.

    --
    Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.