As the world awaits the resolution of the Boston marathon bombers
situation, one thing is clear: what led to their identification and, hopefully capture,
was a combination of two elements: Big Data, and what might be termed the ‘lack
of privacy’.
The contribution of Big Data to the identification of the
criminals is evident: by collecting and collating millions of images and videos
from myriad sources, the FBI and police were able to do a phenomenal job of pinpointing
likely suspects who did or were likely to have committed the crime in question.
Getting to the same place without Big Data may have been possible and eventual,
but only because of a preponderance of data and the correlation activities was
the situation that is happening now able to occur so quickly.
As to the ‘lack of privacy’ element, this was the obvious
result of the hundreds of video/CCTV cameras in question all around Boston, and
most evident along the marathon route that captured (in astounding clarity, by
the way) the two primary suspects toting around black backpacks.
At this point, I wonder if we’ll see any hardcore privacy
advocate step-up and say that though there was a positive by-product of all of
this covert surveillance and yielding of privacy expectations, we should still
not indulge the urge for more of the same. I doubt anyone will be so fearless. On
the other side, it may be more likely that we will see more advocating for the
existence of or proliferation of the ever-present ‘eye in the sky’ that is leading
the authorities to an efficient conclusion of this tragic event.
I think the conversation will continue, as it usually has,
around the practicality of trading-off more security for less privacy, along
with the benefit to the greater good (i.e. more personal privacy) versus the
loss of solitude or discretion, even in public places. At this point that most
of us think we have no or should have no expectation of privacy in public
places, but if you watch closely some of the surveillance footage that captured
the two suspects, you can see other people doing things that I am sure they
would not necessarily want broadcast on public TV (that is, scratching places
and picking places our mothers told us not to…).
The easy question at this exact moment is ‘Do we ask folks
to surrender their humility to the greater good of catching bad guys?’ I think many people at this point in time,
with emotions running so high at this horrific and senseless act of brutality,
would say ‘Absolutely. That is an easy trade-off.’ And so we tolerate the inconveniences
and make sacrifices.
What I think is the ultimate question though is ‘What is the
right amount of trade-off?’ Where is that sweet spot of just enough security
and just enough privacy? The answer is of course, highly personal and
subjective; it is also contextual. Though most of us agree (or are not disagreeing)
with what is being done by the authorities in Boston right now, I am not sure that we would accept another
lockdown of a major American city for anything less than the most extraordinary
series of events. Though data gets bigger all the time, our tolerance for
trade-offs, however, gets smaller.
