Facing Up To Mobile Privacy Perils
A researcher highlights the benefits, and privacy issues, raised by mining mobile data.
Using
the Web entails some privacy risks. Companies using sophisticated data-mining
algorithms can glean an astonishing amount of information on each of us, from
our reading preferences to our shopping habits. Most of us have even grown
accustomed to the idea that malicious hackers could steal every bit of our
financial data, seemingly no matter how careful we are.
What
we’re not quite used to, though computer scientists and privacy advocates have
been warning about it for years, is just how much personal information can be
gleaned from our mobile phones–particularly the increasingly popular,
sensor-laden smart phones, like Apple’s iPhone and Motorola’s new Droid.
In
a “Perspectives” column published today in Science (subscription required), Tom M. Mitchell, head of Carnegie Mellon’s Machine Learning
Department, highlights both the benefits and risks introduced by real-time
analysis of mobile data, and argues that society won’t be able to take maximum
advantage of this technology until it addresses questions about how much of our
lives can be observed and by whom.
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“The
potential benefits of mining such data range from reducing traffic congestion
and pollution, to limiting the spread of disease, to better using public
resources such as parks, buses, and ambulance services,” Mitchell writes.
“But risks to privacy from aggregating these data are on a scale that
humans have never before faced.”
Referred
to as reality mining, such approaches utilize data from location
and motion sensors, in top-end cell phones, built-in microphones, as well as stored
call logs, contact lists, e-mails, text messages, and other files. Most
reality-mining efforts to date have been research projects–academic and corporate–designed
to analyze social interactions and personal behavior. An increasing number of
real-world benefits are coming from these studies.
Mitchell
points out, for instance, that in many cities, Google Maps uses anonymous
location data from smart phones to provide nearly real-time reports of traffic
congestion. And researchers have shown that by analyzing health-related Google
queries (e.g., “Kleenex” or “cough syrup”) from particular
areas, they can estimate the level of flu-like illnesses in different parts of
the United States much more quickly than government agencies such as the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can.
Combining
data sets could open up many new possibilities, Mitchell says. “For
example, if your phone company and local medical center integrated GPS phone
data with up-to-the-minute medical records, they could provide a new kind of
medical service using phone GPS data to detect that you have recently been near
a person who is just now being diagnosed with a contagious disease–then
automatically phoning to warn you.” Of course, he notes, this also opens
up a whole new range of privacy concerns. Such a phone call, for example, could
allow you to deduce information that someone would rather keep private–and
feasibly could keep private without endangering others.
As
Mitchell writes, technical means, such as data anonymization, can help limit threats to privacy and
misuse of data. Another approach would be to mine data from multiple
organizations without ever aggregating the data into a central repository.
But
he argues, “Perhaps even more important than technical approaches will be
a public discussion about how to rewrite the rules of data collection,
ownership, and privacy to deal with this sea change in how much of our lives
can be observed, and by whom. Until these issues are resolved, they are likely
to be the limiting factor in realizing the potential of these new data to
advance our scientific understanding of society and human behavior, and to
improve our daily lives.”
This
idea isn’t a new one in the field: MIT professor Sandy Pentland,
often regarded as the “father”
of reality mining, has argued
for open discussions about
the privacy implications of the technology since its inception. Indeed, Sense Networks, the reality-mining startup that Pentland
cofounded to provide useful information to both individual consumers and
companies, has very clear and specific
policies about its use of
data and users’ right to privacy.
If
only the cellular carriers who already hold so much of our data would be half
so considerate.
