An interesting new book I have come across details the extent that Russian authorities go to in cracking down on online dissent. It also touches on many of the issues that frequently come up when we discuss the “dark side” of big data.According to Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan’s book, The Red Web, the methods used by the Russian police and Federal Protective Service (FSB) make the surveillance of the U.S. National Security Agency and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters look friendly by comparison.
The FSB is often referred to as the successor organization to the Soviet-era KGB, and Soldatov and Borogan’s book explains that many of FSB techniques and strategies have evolved from those developed by its notorious predecessor.
According to the authors, it is just one of a list of organizations – including the tax authorities, border and customs services, and branches of the military – that have the right to eavesdrop on the conversation of any Russian citizen at any time, without having to give an explanation or justification for their actions.
Soldatov and Borogan claim that, in recent years, information gathered in this way has been used to prosecute and imprison countless political and social activists, sometimes following trials held behind closed doors for reasons of “state security.”
This hits at the heart of one of the foremost concerns about how data will be used in the future. With the rate that data collection and analytic technologies are evolving and expanding, it isn’t too big a stretch of the imagination to say that it soon will be possible to know anything about anyone, at any time. The question is, can anyone be trusted with this sort of power – particularly those who can limit our freedoms by jailing or sometimes even killing us if they perceive us to be acting against their interests?
In the West, we may feel relatively comfortable that we have legal frameworks in place that protect our human rights – we have the right for a trial in public, before a jury of peers, for example. But are these rights as solid as they seem? In the last decade, the UK has enacted legislation that allows those charged under the terrorism act effectively to be tried in secret.
On top of that, the extent to which our governments are willing to spy on us has been laid bare by the revelations of Edward Snowden. Snowden, ironically, has chosen Russia to make his home in as he tries to evade prosecution in the United States for what many people believe were whistleblowing acts in the public interest, rather than crimes.
In The Red Web, the authors outline how in 1995, Russian authorities passed a law allowing telecommunications to be monitored. The following year saw the SORM system (an acronym for the system’s Russian name, which translates to “System for Operative Investigative Activities”) become operational. The system enabled the state to tap telephone conversations, secretly and at will.
The following years saw the rapid rise in popularity of the Internet as a means of public communication, and SORM-2 was deployed in 1998 to allow surveillance of this emerging technology.
In 2000, surveillance laws were updated to state that authorities no longer needed to provide an explanation to ISP and telecom companies before demanding personal data. Also, the number of government branches that could access the data was expanded from just the FSB to include police, tax authorities, border and immigration services, military branches, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The system was given its latest major update in 2014, when it became SORM-3. This update was created specifically to give the system the ability to monitor social media. Further legislative changes also came into force, obliging operators of those services to allow their users’ activity to be monitored.
Soldatov and Borogan’s book goes into detail about the extent to which Putin’s regime, while publicly denouncing the Internet as a “CIA project,” is adept at manipulating it for its own ends. Paid trolls are used to plaster pro-Putin propaganda on the websites and social media of western news outlets, and bloggers with over 3,000 subscribers are forced to register with the government so their views can be monitored.
It is certainly an eye-opening read, and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the way digital technology and the big data we are endlessly generating could be used to restrict our civil rights. This certainly should be cause for concern considering the vast amounts of data that will be collected soon.
Take cars for example. By 2020, over a quarter of a billion vehicles will be connected to the Internet. Many will come fitted with sensors that record absolutely everything that is going on around them – both as video and as structured digital data using radar-like technology to build up a 3D model of their surroundings. Additionally, there’s facial recognition technology. It doesn’t seem too paranoid, to me, to assume that one day a government (or, indeed, a very large commercial organization) will be able to piece this data together and determine exactly where anyone is, at any point in time.
In the light of Snowden’s revelations, concerns have been raised from both the political left and right that government monitoring of citizens in the west, too, goes far beyond what anyone has ever signed up for.
Our increasingly digital and connected world undoubtedly brings many benefits – but there are pitfalls that we must be vigilant about, too. As we have seen in both the United States and Europe, governments are willing and able to deceive us about the extent of their surveillance. I believe that we need a much more comprehensive discussion about where big data stops and big brother starts.
Bernard Marr is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, strategic performance consultant, and analytics, KPI, and big data guru. He helps companies to better manage, measure, report, and analyze performance. His leading-edge work with major companies, organizations, and governments across the globe makes him an acclaimed and award-winning keynote speaker, researcher, consultant, and teacher.
NOTE CREDIT: http://data-informed.com/where-does-big-data-stop-and-big-brother-start/