[LINK] It's Not All About You: What P... (theatlantic.com)

[Roger Clarke]

At 13:49 +1100 16/3/12, Dr Bob Jansen wrote:
>It's Not All About You: What Privacy Advocates Don't Get About Data 
>Tracking on the Web
>http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/its-not-all-about-you-what-privacy-advocates-dont-get-about-data-tracking-on-the-web/254533/

The first half of the title is fair enough, and the text below says 
it well (although it's hardly new news).

But I'm not sure what justification Furnas has for accusing "privacy 
advocates" of not knowing how behavioural targeting works, and why 
it's a problem.

I don't agree with his conclusion that "our critiques of ad tracking 
(and the fundamental asymmetries it creates) need to focus more on 
power and less on privacy".  *Both* need to be focussed on, market 
power in the consumer protection context, and privacy in the human 
rights context.

Maybe what Furnas really means is 'Consumer advocates need to wake up 
and attack behavioural targeting, and its enabler, the acquisition 
and exploitation of personal data, with as much gusto as privacy 
advocates do'.

[So, agreed Bob, it's thought-provoking, i.e. just-annoying-enough (:-)} ]

________________________________________________________________________

Nice short explanation:

Rather than caring about what they know about me, we should care 
about what they know about us. Detailed knowledge of individuals and 
their behavior coupled with the aggregate data on human behavior now 
available at unprecedented scale grants incredible power. Knowing 
about all of us - how we behave, how our behavior has changed over 
time, under what conditions our behavior is subject to change, and 
what factors are likely to impact our decision-making under various 
conditions - provides a roadmap for designing persuasive 
technologies. For the most part, the ethical implications of 
widespread deployment of persuasive technologies remains unexamined.

Using all of the trace data we leave in our digital wakes to target 
ads is known as "behavioral advertising." This is what target was 
doing to identify pregnant women, and what Amazon does with every 
user and every purchase. But behavioral advertisers do more than just 
use your past behavior to guess what you want. Their goal is actually 
to alter user behavior. Companies use extensive knowledge gleaned 
from innumerable micro-experiments and massive user behavior data 
over time to design their systems to elicit the monetizable behavior 
that their business models demand.  At levels as granular as Google 
testing click-through rates on 41 different shades of blue, 
data-driven companies have learned how to channel your attention, 
initiate behavior, and keep you coming back.

... this is just an update to the longstanding discussion in business 
ethics circles over the implications of persuasive advertising. 
Behavioral economics has shown that humans' cognitive biases can be 
exploited, so Roger Crisp has noted that subliminal and persuasive 
advertising undermines the autonomy of the consumer. And the advent 
of big-data and user-centered design has provided those who would 
persuade with a new and more powerful arsenal. This has led design 
ethicists to call for the explicit "moralization of technology," 
wherein designers would have to confront the ethical implications of 
the actions they shape.

...  The result is a fundamental information asymmetry. The data 
collectors have more information than those they are they are 
collecting the data from; the persuaders more power than the 
persuaded.

...  To understand the stakes, our critiques of ad tracking (and the 
fundamental asymmetries it creates) need to focus more on power and 
less on privacy.


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law               University of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University