In Isaac Azimov’s book “I Robot”, the law of robotics was to do no harm to human beings. If a computer system became self realizing today, it would find no such restriction. In fact, looking at its programs, it would find its sole purpose was to gather as much data on individuals as possible and sell that data for use in a daily blizzard of individualized advertising to get us to buy as much as possible.
In the last few weeks we find that Healthnet and Sony had been “hacked” for essential data. Why is it that the data was not encrypted? It is reasonable that if they are selling or allowing others to mine the data, then they have to have an unencrypted version available. I also learned that the social network Facebook also reads your email and finds key words that can lead to directed advertising. Many social network users probably think it is free because the creators were just driven nerds who wanted some way to show off and get dates. Apparently they are missing the fact that Facebook is now valued at $50 billion and yet has no assets other than disks holding all of your data, and computers to allow advertisers to maximize the use of that data. Not only will they use the data for advertising, but will sell access to other companies also willing to pay to access the data.
With storage of pictures on cell phones and on the web, it is only a short time until stores are using face recognition software to identify you as you enter, and direct you personally to the products that they know you will be interested in from your Facebook, Amazon or other databases.
Will Congress or the Supreme Court help us keep our “right to privacy”? The House has voted to end or defund as much government oversight of business as possible. The Supreme Court has decided that businesses can spend as much on political ads as they want and at any times, without disclosing what they are paying for. They have also ruled out class action suits against businesses.
OK, maybe this is too conspiritorial, but with Glenn Beck going off the air, we are left to generate our own conspiricies for discussion.
