Will the PRISM surveillance lead to EU lawsuits?
By: Gregory P. Bufithis, Esq. (founder, Senior Writer) and Eric De Grasse (Chief Technology Officer)
13 June 2013 – So in the land that makes litigation fun, the American Civil Liberties Union, together with the New York Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in New York which claims that the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance of millions of Verizon customers is unconstitutional. The suit lists key members of the Obama administration’s national security team as the defendants.
Meanwhile in Europe there has been much chatter that internet companies that pass data to the NSA under the PRISM program could face legal action in the European Union (EU). Viviane Reding, the EU’s Justice Commissioner, has added her voice to the chorus of questions directed towards the US Attorney General over revelations surrounding PRISM. She will be raising the issue at a meeting with the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in Dublin this week.
And this all comes on the news that the Obama administration successfully lobbied the European Commission to strip its data-privacy legislation of … Read more
Despite concerns about government surveillance, information market for consumer data intensifies … and you are selling for $0.0005 a pop
12 June 2013 – For the past three years the Financial Times has been running a series on … for lack of a better term … “data”. Articles have appeared in its “Connected Business” section (6 editions a year), it’s “Cybersecurity” section (twice a year) and in its regular weekday and weekend editions. Subjects have included EU data protection, the corporate competition to accumulate information about consumers, concerns about government surveillance (yes, before PRISM), unregulated companies that obtain information by scouring social networks and/or purchase histories and public records, the use and power of algorithms to determine/predict consumer behavior, etc., etc. We have included many references in our posts over the years.
Tomorrow’s regular edition of the FT has a corker of a story. Despite all the growing concerns about government surveillance, the corporate competition to accumulate information about consumers is fierce, pushing down the market price for intimate personal details to fractions of a cent. As the FT has reported in previous articles, the surveillance of consumers has developed into a multibillion-dollar industry conducted by largely unregulated companies that … Read more
Big Data: Stop Focusing On Size
It’s not the size of your data, it’s what you do with it, says IBM analytics executive
15 March 2013 – Rich Rodts, who manages IBM’s analytics academic programs, often finds himself discussing big data with family, friends, clients and business partners, including representatives from top universities across the U.S. ”There really is no wrong definition of what big data is,” Rodts told InformationWeek in a phone interview. “I like to explain big data as taking a vast amount of information and being able to distill it in a way that can be consumed and acted upon.”
A common definition that’s often overused is one that focuses solely on the vast quantities of data being created, said Rodts, who offered an alternative view. Big data, he said, “paints a picture” of a human being, including the often mundane tasks a person completes through the day: using an ATM, paying bills or buying movie tickets online, taking public transportation, and so on. “Each one of those things creates a unique data point,” said Rodts. “One that points back to me as … Read more