Privacy and Big Data

Chapter 1. The Perfect Storm

If, like us, you spent the last 20 years or so working in the high tech industry, you’ve had a bird’s-eye view of the evolving data privacy debate. No matter where you fall on the privacy continuum—from a cavalier approach to how your data is being collected and used to a more cynical and, some might argue, paranoid view of the endless ways your information could be hijacked—it is safe to say that the stakes have never been higher.

There is a perfect storm brewing; a storm fueled by innovations that have altered how we talk and communicate with each other. Who could have predicted 20 years ago that the Internet would have an all-encompassing effect on our lives? Outside of sleeping, we are connected to the Web 24/7, using our laptops, phones, or iPads to check our email, read our favorite blogs, look for restaurants and jobs, read our friends’ Facebook walls, buy books, transfer money, get directions, tweet and foursquare our locations, and organize protests against dictatorships from anywhere in the world. Welcome to the digital age.

Digital technology has created and nurtured a new world order where much that was impossible is now possible. We may not have personal jet packs or flying cars, but we do have video phones and combat drones. We may not yet inhabit the world George Orwell predicted in his dystopian novel, 1984, a world in which there was no right to privacy and the government used surveillance and misinformation to control its citizens; however, ...