There are many who believe Big Data and personal data are going to be fuel for the machines and further the Data Science industry. Given that our personal data is the coal which drives this energy, people are only craving to collect more & more.
"Data [sic]... you will know human beings better" -Jack Ma
Its no surprise then that its being used in elections across the world. Elections are not about peddling mixer grinders or televisions, those are just bribes for your vote. They are about peddling imagined realities, dreams that a person can lead you into. Not very much unlike what the religious leaders do. Except, in different frameworks, humans are crafting as we go along.
One such scandal is that of Cambridge Analytica. This company was setup, among other things, to ostensibly use personal data from Facebook to influence voters, towards election campaigns in the US. It has entities which did the same in other countries like India. Analysing human behaviour seems very much in line with the goals of Data Science, and de riguer in retail these days. Except, there were questions over how the data was accessed and how it was used. Apparently, The users were not kept informed about how the data was being used. Worse, the profile of friends from each users page was collected without their knowledge or consent. It very likely your friends have given you up even if you wouldn't.
As per the terms of use, Dr. Aleksandr Kogan of Cambridge University was provided access to crawl all users on facebook, and their friends, to his app for non commercial purposes. But, he turned it into a commercial venture with Cambridge Analytica. Does that put the blame on Kogan, for monetising his data? Or Facebook for violating data privacy? Or Cambridge Analytica for using the data to target audiences?
The Custom audience terms (Last modified: 2 December 2016) on Facebook allows people to use data not directly collected from the subject, but passes the blame to the data collector
If you have not collected the data directly from the data subject, you confirm, without limiting anything in these terms, that you have all necessary rights and permissions to use the data
Its important for Facebook to tighten these screws and the privacy laws of the state need to step in to close these loopholes. Some countries already do. When Kogan changed his setting from research to commercial, no flag went off at Facebook. Thats another flaw to be fixed. What are Kogan's liabilities for having conspired to make money out of the research data. On one hand, we would want research institutions to work with industry to incubate startups. On the other, we have no way of knowing where the line for misuse is being drawn.
We need to revisit what John Locke said about liberty and add personal data to it. Most countries already recognise the critical nature of personal data. Maybe its time to make punishment more stringent, to prevent stealing of personal information, without consent explicitly taken and purpose explicitly stated.