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Mental Privacy in the Age of Big Data

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by Jessica Ginsberg
A father stood at the door of his local Minneapolis Target, fuming, and demanding to speak to the store manager. Holding coupons for maternity clothes and nursing furniture in front of the manager, the father exclaimed, “My daughter got this in the mail! She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”
Target was not trying to get her pregnant. Unbeknownst to the father, his daughter was due in August.
In his February 16, 2012 New York Times article entitled, “How Companies Learn Your Secrets,” Charles Duhigg reported on this Minneapolis father and daughter and how companies like Target use marketing analytics teams to develop algorithms to anticipate consumers’ current and future needs. Accumulating data from prior purchases, coupon use, surveys submitted, emails from Target that were opened, and demographics, a team of analysts render each consumer’s decision patterns into neatly packaged data sets tailored to predict their future buying choices.
Flash forward to 2017, a time where online stores like Amazon dominate the market and cell phones are reservoirs of personal information, storing intimate details ranging from your location to your desired body weight to your mood. Furthermore, data analysis algorithms are more sophisticated than ever before, gobbling up volumes of information to generate highly specific and precise profiles of current and potential consumers. For example, plugging information into an algorithm ranging from social media activity to Internet searches to data collected from smart phone applications unlocks a goldmine of sensitive information that reveal the proclivities, thought processes, self-perception, habits, emotional state, political affiliations, obligations, health status, and triggers of each consumer. We must then ask ourselves, in the age of Big Data, can we expect mental privacy? That is, in a society replete with widespread data collection about individuals, what safeguards are in place to protect the use and analysis of information gathered from our virtual presence?
In addition to the information deliberately submitted to our phones and computers, we must also worry about the data we subconsciously supply. Take, for example, the brain training program Lumosity. Over the past 10 years, this website has lured over 70 million subscribers with promises that their product will “bring better brain health,” delay conditions like Alzheimer’s and dementia, and help players “learn faster,” be sharper.” Though Lumosity and other similar companies like LearningRx were sued by the Federal Trade Commission for false advertising and must now offer a disclaimer about the lack of scientific support backing their product, has the damage already been done?
More troubling than a brain training company’s use of unsubstantiated claims to tap into consumer fears of losing mental acuity for financial gain, the information collected by these brain training programs may serve as yet another puzzle piece for big data firms. Now, not only can applications and search engine histories provide a robust portfolio of what an individual consciously purchases and searches, but now these brain training websites can provide deeper insights into how individuals reason and analyze information. In their article entitled “Internet-Based Brain Training Games, Citizen Scientists, and Big Data: Ethical Issues in Unprecedented Virtual Territories,” Dr. Purcell and Dr. Rommelfanger express this concern: brain training program (BTP) data “are being interpreted as current demonstrations of existing behaviors and predispositions, and not just correlations or future predictions of human cognitive capacity and performance. Yet, the vulnerability of cognitive performance data collected from BTPs has been overlooked, and we believe the rapid consumption of such games warrants a sense of immediacy to safeguarding these data” (Purcell & Rommelfanger 2015, 357). The article proceeds to question how the data collected through brain training programs will be “secured, interpreted, and used in the near and long term given evolving security threats and rapidly advancing methods of data analysis” (Purcell & Rommelfanger, 357).
Even more worrisome are the lack of protections currently afforded to those who turn to websites and phone applications for guidance in coping with mental health issues. According to a 2014 article entitled “Mental Health Apps: Innovations, Risks and Ethical Considerations,” research shows a majority of young adults with mental health problems do not seek professional help, despite the existence of effective psychological and pharmacological treatments (Giota & Kleftaras 2014, 20). Instead, many of these individuals turn to mental health websites and phone applications, which “are youth-friendly, easily accessible and flexible to use” (Giota & Kleftaras 2014, 20). Applications such as Mobile Therapy and MyCompass collect and monitor data ranging from lifestyle information, such as food consumption, exercise and eating habits, to mood, energy levels, and requests for psychological treatments to reduce anxiety, depression, and stress (Proudfoot et al 2013). Alarmingly, users of these programs are not guaranteed absolute protection from the developers. That is, current legal mechanisms in the United States do not fully prevent developers from selling personal health information submitted into apps to third party marketers and advertisers.
Justice Allen E. Broussard of the Supreme Court of California declared in a 1986 opinion, “If there is a quintessential zone of human privacy it is the mind” (Long Beach City Emps. Ass’n. v. City of Long Beach). Indeed, with the advent of cell phones, widespread use of the internet, data analysts, and complex algorithms that predict future behaviors, our claim to privacy is waning. Until laws and regulations are designed to protect information collected from phone applications and Internet use, it is crucial that consumers become fully aware of just how much of themselves they share when engaging in Internet and phone activity.
References 
Giota, K.G. and Kleftaras, G. 2014. Mental Health Apps: Innovations, Risks and Ethical Considerations. E-Health Telecommunication Systems and Networks, 3, 19-23.
Long Beach City Emps. Ass’n. v. City of Long Beach, 719 P.2d 660, 663 (Cal. 1986).
Proudfoot, J., Clarke, J., Birch, M.R., Whitton, A.E., Parker, G., Manicavasagar, V., et al. (2013) Impact of a Mobile Phone and Web Program on Symptom and Functional Outcomes for People with Mild-to-Moderate Depression, Anxiety and Stress: A Randomised Controlled Trial. BMC Psychiatry, 13, 312.
Purcell, R. H., & Rommelfanger, K. S. 2015. Internet-based brain training games, citizen scientists, and big data: ethical issues in unprecedented virtual territories. Neuron, 86(2), 356-359.

Want to cite this post?

Ginsberg, J. (2017). Mental Privacy in the Age of Big Data. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on June 27, 2017, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2017/06/mental-privacy-in-age-of-big-data.html

Jessica Ginsberg is a second year student in the Master of Arts in Bioethics program and a third year law student at Emory University. This article was originally published in the Emory University Neuroethics Blog.

A Generational Shift in Europe

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by George Friedman, Stratfor

Change in the international system comes in large and small doses, but fundamental patterns generally stay consistent. From 1500 to 1991, for example, European global hegemony constituted the world’s operating principle. Within this overarching framework, however, the international system regularly reshuffles the deck in demoting and promoting powers, fragmenting some and empowering others, and so on. Sometimes this happens because of war, and sometimes because of economic and political forces. While the basic structure of the world stays intact, the precise way it works changes.

The fundamental patterns of European domination held for 500 years. That epoch of history ended in 1991, when the Soviet Union — the last of the great European empires — collapsed with global consequences. In China, Tiananmen Square defined China for a generation. China would continue its process of economic development, but the Chinese Communist Party would remain the dominant force. Japan experienced an economic crisis that ended its period of rapid growth and made the world’s second-largest economy far less dynamic than before. And in 1993, the Maastricht Treaty came into force, creating the contemporary European Union and holding open the possibility of a so-called United States of Europe that could counterbalance the United States of America. [Read more…]

Israel, Egypt and a Strategic Reconsideration

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By George Friedman – reprinted with express permission from Stratfor

The events in Egypt have sent shock waves through Israel. The 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel have been the bedrock of Israeli national security. In three of the four wars Israel fought before the accords, a catastrophic outcome for Israel was conceivable. In 1948, 1967 and 1973, credible scenarios existed in which the Israelis were defeated and the state of Israel ceased to exist. In 1973, it appeared for several days that one of those scenarios was unfolding.

The survival of Israel was no longer at stake after 1978. In the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the various Palestinian intifadas and the wars with Hezbollah in 2006 and Hamas in Gaza in 2008, Israeli interests were involved, but not survival. There is a huge difference between the two. Israel had achieved a geopolitical ideal after 1978 in which it had divided and effectively made peace with two of the four Arab states that bordered it, and neutralized one of those states. The treaty with Egypt removed the threat to the Negev and the southern coastal approaches to Tel Aviv. [Read more…]

Pretty Soon, We’ll All Have One of These

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USB electrical outletHere’s betting that within five years, power outlets with built in USB receptacles will be commonplace.   Fortunately USB connectivity has become ubiquitous (although it would be nice if the device connectors were a little more standardized).  How nice will it be to charge your USB enabled devices without having to boot up a computer.

This particular unit is manufactured and sold by the FastMac company and one of these babies can be yours for only $19.95.

This product also made it as one of the “best tech ideas of 2010” by the New York Times.  In my view this product is by far the most practical of the tech items discussed.

Mining Rescue was Compelling TV, but….

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Television coverage of the rescue of the Chilean miners was certainly compelling TV.  In many ways this rescue was reminiscent of the first moon landing in 1969.   I was only 8 years old then but I remember watching the grainy footage of Neil Armstrong and thinking how amazing it was that we could see this event live.

The mining rescue was equally compelling.  Incredibly the Chilean government had lowered television cameras and lights into the mine some 2000 feet below the surface of the earth, and we could see the rescue taking place in real time.

Unfortunately the mine rescue footage could not be condensed in real time, meaning that the anchormen and women had a lot of dead space to fill.  Despite exhortations from Larry King of all people to just “sit and watch” the rescue, the anchors simply could not keep quiet.

Perhaps the silliest comment of the evening, and perhaps in the top 10 all time was uttered by Gary Tuchman, a CNN anchor.  While waiting for the emergence of the rescue capsule containing rescued miner Mario Sepulveda, Tuchman and Larry King noted that one of the busiest streets in Los Angeles is called Sepulveda Boulevard and that “it is named after another Sepulveda.”

Really.  I never would have assumed than a major thoroughfare in Los Angeles was not named after a heretofore unknown Chilean miner.

Gary Tuchman followed up this compelling non sequitur with the following comment, which I am quoting directly from the CNN transcript:

“October 13th may become a national holiday in Chile, and Sepulveda Boulevard in Los Angeles may also be named after Mario Sepulveda, the second miner who’s about to come up any minute.”

Okay.  Not much I can add to that.

Larry King then quickly turned to another guest, presumably with the hope that something worthwhile might be said.

Revenge, Reconciliation and Responsibility

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I just finished reading a beautiful article called Revenge, Reconciliation and Responsibility by Professor Kenneth Wald, a political science professor at the University of Florida.  Published in the Voices of Conservative Judaism magazine, Professor Wald describes his visit to Grosrohrsdorf in Germany – the town where his grandparents lived before being driven out during the Kristallnact pogrom.

Professor Wald had been invited to Grosrohrsdorf by three townspeople who decided to tell the story of the town under Nazi rule.  Wald, whose grandparents perished in the concentration camps, describes his meetings with the sons and daughters of the Nazis and sympathizers, and their reaction to him and his message.

A very insightful article – highly recommended.