Impact of Big Data on Freedom and Privacy

With the rise of the technological revolution in social world and benefits it creates, comes also concerns and issues about the range of use of those technologies. The use of big data is just a small, but nevertheless, important issue in the common world and raises many questions such as the process of data collection, how much information is gathered about a person and how that information is being used, whether there is a balance between benefits and costs and finally, how does it affect our every-day lives.

From Plato, Hobbes and Locke to the present, the rights of liberty and free expression have been considered as fundamental human rights. The advent and incessant development of computer technologies have profoundly changed the existence of man; new technologies, as initial tool and aid of human activities, have determined a revolution, characterized by social change and the emergence of new interests and needs. The spread of technologies concerns the life of individuals and organizations, influencing daily activities, relationships, scientific progress, social and economic growth, human mindset. After the explosion of the digital revolution due to the diffusion of personal computers and the Internet, nowadays one of the problems is posed by the increased use of big data.

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Because data protection and privacy are commonly highlighted issues in recent history, this paper will research the impact of big data to such fundamental rights as freedom and privacy, questioning the relationship between law and morality concerning the use of data.

Big Data, Small Freedom

First of all, there is a need to understand what big data is and what are the implications for societal behavior, rooting the analysis in the political philosophy as part of the larger process of postmodernity. Our generation is truly defined by technology which changed the role in social life.

Technology has turned into a means of control. Everything we do in the digital world leaves behind a footprint of our choices, preferences and hobbies.

Quoting Aristotle, “man is a social animal”, which means that he is naturally led to establish social relations with his similes. The Internet is a place where a multitude of relations can be created, becoming, in the digital era, one of the main places where people keep in touch. Therefore, it is through a good govern of innovation technology that there is a possibility to construct a more secure world, where man can express himself fully.

The word ‘big data’ refers to the number of technologies and analysis methodologies of massive data from which states, businesses and people with interest, try to examine and to correlate in order to find some kind of relationships between different phenomena, to forecast future events and to market behavior. Traditional privacy is, thus, threatened: today, large multinational companies are rushing to grab more data as possible, both in explicit and implicit ways, from citizens-users who do not know to have been manipulated. In mostly of this big data market, transparency and ethical constraints are not included. It is clear that whether a lot is known about us, the less we are free in our choices before being made by others.

Logic questions come up in our mind: ‘Has our thinking been hacked?’, ‘Does big data restrict individual freedom?’. We can be defined as digital slaves: due to the manipulation of information, a sort of prison for our thinking is built, limiting de facto choice freedom and invading our privacy with the goal to earn from our known psychological weaknesses.

For instance, how many of us do know that our medical records can be sold? Although they are considered confidential because of the private information they contain, sometimes and for different reasons they can be released without a patient's consent. By asking and under restricted rules, entities with scopes to do research or to conduct other education functions, can obtain them.

Big Data, Big Risk

Big data and artificial intelligence are undoubtedly important innovations. As assumed, big data is a sort of new tool to get power and to affect our lives, but this power is useless without a moral framework which should promote users’ protection and guarantee the rights of privacy and security, a sort of new ‘social contract’ in Hobbes’ words, where people would agree to accept new rules because of the mutual benefit, choosing rationality over their natural selfish instincts.

If on the one hand technological development has contributed to facilitate the dissemination of data and information and to improve state-citizens relation, on the other hand it has subdued people to several risks caused by lack of regulation of these new digital tools as well as adequate and aware knowledge of their use. While being a connective tissue of the new technological society, it could be a hypothetical and extremely dangerous instrument of subjection: citizens have been exposed to a series of damaging vulnerabilities. Moral responsibility in using data should need an ethical code of conduct. Nevertheless, from the perspective of legal positivism, Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart emphasized on the separability of law and morality. Today, law is called to legislate in technological sector itself because of the need to safeguard the rights and to heal conflicts caused by human digital existence, increasingly an integral part of real life. Moreover, from Mill’s point of view, there is the necessity that acts and rules be assessed using a utilitarian calculus where the good and bad of big data are weighed on a scale.

As recently confirmed by the EU General Data Protection Regulation, risk assessment models play an increasing role in data protection. Indeed, personal data security assessment is a complex activity not only because of the consequences resulting from an accidental loss or theft, but also because one has to avoid provision of sensitive data which could lead to a sort of control of users and, thus, to a limitation of freedom in our so called ‘society of information’. Big data may incorporate information that infringes upon people's privacy, giving firms information that they do not intend to collect. Less known is who buying data companies are: for example, in Vermont, thanks to a new law, the first of its kind, willing companies have to register with the Secretary of State. Be conscious of digital security social relevance and of the dangers of artificial intelligence brings more physical security for individuals.

We are all in the focus of institutional surveillance. How do people can achieve self-development, if they are not totally free in their own decisions? As Immanuel Kant noted, to reach that aim, one has to have control over his life and self-determinate himself, possessing the right to know and control what others know about him. Existing constraints define a despot society and an incompatible use of data with current democracy. Transparency of the aims for which personal data are used should be a requirement. Indeed, whenever people feel free to make decisions for themselves, in general regarding their data uses, in particular regarding who can use it and how much they can know about us, a higher level of trust in institutions can be attained. To ensure greater privacy and to prevent discrimination, all morally wrong and offensive human dignity uses of data, for instance unauthorized and harmful ones, have to be punished by law. Furthermore, authorities have to ensure that the central aims of data use are to foster the peaceful coexistence of humanity and to create a fair system of social coexistence based on the principles of fairness, equality and justice, as said by Hobbes. Big data requires an examination of those that have control over big data, in order to reach the good common to all qua members of the society, which in this case is nothing more than the highest level of security possible.

Conclusion

Even if digital revolution is in full swing, this process has already produced upheavals which are there for all to see. Because there is a gap between the interests of consumers and those who are using big data as a tool for their own benefit, there will continue to be a tension and no common ground for both parties because both interests will be protected unless limits to the use of big data will be imposed by law and the misuse of collected data will have serious legal consequences. On the other hand, it should be as much of a big responsibility for consumers to not make themselves vulnerable to the misuse of their data. Possibly one of the issues is the lack of knowledge about data collection simply because this digital revolution has evolved and is still continuing to evolve so rapidly that it raises more questions than answers which is the issue that should be addressed and resolved globally.