Big Data Could Create an Era of Big Discrimination

Personal data harvested by marketers is growing so vast and far reaching that it is threatening to unleash a new wave of digital discrimination, one that ordinary people won't even be able to see happening, Microsoft principal researcher Kate Crawford is warning.

Combining the troves of information collected by retailers, mobile carriers, Internet companies and others into massive databases creates so-called big data sets. Computers then troll the data looking for patterns that can be used to make predictions about consumer habits.

“Some people think that big data is really quite fantastic because you're working at a mass level and therefore you can't actually conduct group-based discrimination,” Crawford said, speaking at theEmTech conference at MIT last week. “It's actually quite the opposite. Big data is not color blind, it's not gender blind and, in fact, marketers are using big data to have ever-more precise categories about you.”

A recent study at Cambridge University looking at almost 60,000 people’s Facebook “likes” was able to predict with high degrees of accuracy their gender, race, sexual orientation and even a tendency to drink excessively. The model could tell a gay man from a straight man correctly 88% of the time and predict race with 95% accuracy, for example. Government agencies, employers or landlords could easily obtain such data, Crawford warns.

A lender, for example, who didn't want borrowers of a certain race could show online offers only to people whose social network activity fit certain parameters. Banks must report detailed statistics about their actual lending activity to regulators, but web advertising parameters are seemingly free of discrimination. By never putting offers in front of unwanted groups, and thus never formally rejecting them, those who engage in online discrimination could sidestep fair lending and redlining laws that apply in the physical world.

Most concern about data collection has focused on the government, particularly after the revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Crawford welcomed the increased skepticism following the Snowden leaks but warns there is much potential harm from commercial misuse of data, as well.

“It's not that big data is effectively discriminating -- it is, we know that it is,” says Crawford. “It's that you will never actually know what those discriminations are.”

Another problem can arise when collected data isn’t representative of the entire population. For example, well-off people are more likely to carry smartphones than the poor. Two years ago, the City of Boston released an app called Street Bump that automatically sends reports about potholes using data from smartphone sensors. But the city had to be mindful that reports were more likely to come from areas with higher phone ownership rates.

Big data predictions and pigeon-holing can also be harmful when wrong. A decade ago, some TiVo users spent weeks trying to convince their machines to stop recording shows aimed at demographic groups they weren't in. "If TiVo Thinks You Are Gay, Here's How to Set It Straight," read one Wall Street Journal headline from 2002. Mistaken algorithms today could scare off employers, college admissions officers or others screening candidates via big data. "If I predict something about you and I'm right, that can be just as dangerous as if I predict something about you and I am wrong," Crawford says.

Crawford also wants to temper the excitement around studying real-time Twitter activity to guide rescue efforts during natural disasters. A review of activity on the social network during Hurricane Sandy last year, for example, found that the peaks of activity occurred not in places with the most damage or need for help, like the outskirts of Queens and Staten Island, but in areas where Twitter use was most prevalent, like Manhattan.

Databases are now combining a vast array of different sources – everything from the output of mobile apps and Web searches to radio tags on items bought at a store and phone-location trackers.

Even data scrubbed to remove personal references can be reconnected to individuals. Cellphone carriers are selling collections of data about phone movements, for instance, with all personal details removed. But a group of researchers from MIT, the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and other institutions looked at one such collection and were able to pinpoint 95% of the unique users by analyzing just four GPS time and location stamps per person.

Several years ago, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University were able to create a system to uncover Social Security numbers from birthday and hometown information listed on social networking sites like Facebook.

All the studies point to a need for additional protections and awareness, Crawford says. “We can't afford to set up a system with no opt out and no protections for its citizens,” she says. “Frankly, it doesn't take a science-fiction scenario to realize what is at stake.”

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How your personal data can be used against you

All the data being compiled can be used to discriminate against you, and the worst part is, you'll never know.
Not always accurate

A postponed high-stakes meeting at the White House. A rescheduled closed-door gathering of Republican senators. Leaders of the bitterly divided Congress ducking into each others' offices. President Barack Obama, behind a table of bologna sandwiches, pressing lawmakers to forge an 11th-hour deal to spare the fragile economy from a potentially catastrophic debt default.

And from the chaos, growing optimism about a possible deal — even though it may just set the weary country up for another confrontation in only a few short months.

With the partial government shutdown entering its third week and the United States due to slam into the congressionally set debt ceiling in just days, top lawmakers and Obama sounded uncharacteristically hopeful Monday about an agreement to get back to business and avert a default.

Two Democratic Senate aides cautiously described the emerging deal as including a debt-ceiling hike that would last until Feb. 7 or 15, 2014, providing enough money to keep the government open until mid-January, and securing a commitment from all sides to launch comprehensive negotiations on the nation's finances.

Those broader budget discussions would not take the form of a supercommittee. (That ship has sailed — and sank.) Instead, negotiators from the Senate and House would meet to hash out differences on the budget — a “conference,” as called for under regular congressional procedure when the two chambers disagree. The conference would target an agreement by mid-December.

Democrats hoped those broader discussions would lead to some sort of compromise that would avert the next round of automatic, across-the-board “sequestration” spending cuts due to take effect in January.

Amid the frantic negotiations, the White House scheduled a 3 p.m. ET Oval Office meeting between Obama and the top GOP and Democratic leaders in Congress — then postponed it indefinitely, saying the president hoped to give lawmakers more time to reach a deal.

Senate Republicans encountered their own scheduling snafu, first calling a 5:45 p.m. ET closed-door conference to discuss the possible agreement, and then putting it off until Tuesday to accommodate lawmakers not yet returned from their district.

Obama staged a photo-op visit to a local food bank, posing in a green apron with kids and furloughed government employees — and facing a symbolic struggle of his own, as polarized Washington leaders struggled to seal the deal.

“The Ziplock’s not zipping,” the president said, wrestling a sandwich into a plastic bag.

Obama told reporters that he hoped to use the White House talks to gauge “whether this progress is real.”

“And you know, my hope is that a spirit of cooperation will move us forward over the next few hours,” he said. The meeting was postponed not long afterward.

The postponed meeting would have included Republican House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Vice President Joe Biden was also due to attend.

The U.S. Treasury says the government will hit its debt ceiling Thursday, running out of the authority to borrow money to pay for existing programs and risking a debt default that experts warn will send shock waves through the fragile global economy.

“Not only is it untenable for us to continue this shutdown — this week if we don't start making some real progress both in the House and the Senate, and if Republicans aren't willing to set aside some of their partisan concerns in order to do what's right for the country, we stand a good chance of defaulting,” Obama warned. “And defaulting would have a potentially devastating effect on our economy, sending interest rates shooting up, [and] people — whether Social Security recipients or people with disabilities or small-business people who are vendors to government — not getting paid on time.”

“We've already had a damaging effect on our economy because of the shutdown,” the president added. “That damage would be greatly magnified if we don't make sure that the government's paying its bills, and that has to be decided this week.”

Reid and McConnell have been working behind the scenes to cobble together a deal, and a bipartisan group of 12 senators has been doing the same. Ultimately, though, the question is: How will the House GOP respond, with time already running short?

"We're getting closer," Reid told reporters after he met privately with McConnell.

The Republican leader agreed: "We’ve had an opportunity to have some constructive exchanges of views on how to move forward. I share his optimism — we will get a result that will be acceptable to both sides."

Several other lawmakers have sounded optimistic notes about getting a deal done quickly.

“I think we'll solve this problem over the next few days. I think today may be a very good day,” Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told MSNBC’s "Morning Joe."

But Obama said he would keep pushing Congress “until the details are done.”

And the president appeared to refer to public opinion polls that have shown Republicans bearing the brunt of the blame for a shutdown that their tea party-affiliated rank and file triggered by demanding that the president accept some rolling back of his signature health care law, Obamacare.

“There's been some progress on the Senate side, with Republicans recognizing it's not tenable, it's not smart, it's not good for the American people to let America default,” he said.

Possible shutdown deal being hammered out

The emerging deal could include a debt ceiling hike that would last until early February, two sources say.
How will House GOP respond?

WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Security Agency has been sifting through millions of contact lists from personal email and instant messaging accounts around the world — including those of Americans — in its effort to find possible links to terrorism or other criminal activity, according to a published report.

The Washington Post reported late Monday that the spy agency intercepts hundreds of thousands of email address books every day from private accounts on Yahoo, Gmail, Facebook and Hotmail that move though global data links. The NSA also collects about a half million buddy lists from live chat services and email accounts.

The Post said it learned about the collection tactics from secret documents provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden and confirmed by senior intelligence officials. It was the latest revelation of the spy agency's practices to be disclosed by Snowden, the former NSA systems analyst who fled the U.S. and now resides in Russia.

The newspaper said the NSA analyzes the contacts to map relationships and connections among various foreign intelligence targets. During a typical day last year, the NSA's Special Source Operations branch collected more than 440,000 email address books, the Post said. That would correspond to a rate of more than 250 million a year.

A spokesman for the national intelligence director's office, which oversees the NSA, told the Post that the agency was seeking intelligence on valid targets and was not interested in personal information from ordinary Americans.

Spokesman Shawn Turner said the NSA was guided by rules that require the agency to "minimize the acquisition, use and dissemination" of information that identifies U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

While the collection was taking place overseas, the Post said it encompassed the contact lists of many American users. The spy agency obtains the contact lists through secret arrangements with foreign telecommunications companies or other services that control Internet traffic, the Post reported.

Earlier this year, Snowden gave documents to the Post and Britain's Guardian newspaper disclosing U.S. surveillance programs that collect vast amounts of phone records and online data in the name of foreign intelligence, often sweeping up information on American citizens.

The collection of contact lists in bulk would be illegal if done in the United States, but the Post said the agency can get around that restriction by intercepting lists from access points around the world.

The newspaper quoted a senior intelligence official as saying NSA analysts may not search or distribute information from the contacts database unless they can "make the case that something in there is a valid foreign intelligence target in and of itself."

Commenting on the Post story, Alex Abdo, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an emailed statement: "This revelation further confirms that the NSA has relied on the pretense of 'foreign intelligence gathering' to sweep up an extraordinary amount of information about everyday Americans. The NSA's indiscriminate collection of information about innocent people can't be justified on security grounds, and it presents a serious threat to civil liberties."

Report: NSA collecting contact lists

The agency sifts through millions of contact lists from personal email and instant messaging accounts, a newspaper reports.
More Snowden leaks

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate leaders are closing in on an agreement to reopen the government and forestall an economy-rattling default on U.S. obligations.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky could seal an agreement on Tuesday, just two days before the Treasury Department says it will run out of borrowing capacity.

The emerging pact would reopen the government through Jan. 15 and permit the Treasury to borrow normally until early to mid-February, easing dual crises that have sapped confidence in the economy and taken a sledgehammer to the GOP's poll numbers.

"The general framework is there" between Reid and McConnell, said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. He said conversations with the House were continuing and he thought it would be midday Tuesday at the earliest before a plan was finalized.

President Barack Obama telephoned McConnell on Monday to talk about the emerging deal, a McConnell aide said. Congressional leaders had been scheduled to meet with Obama at the White House on Monday, but the meeting was postponed to allow more time for negotiations.

On Wall Street, futures were mixed early Tuesday, with investors somewhat optimistic over a potential deal.

Sen. Mark Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat who was part of the bipartisan group known as the Gang of 12 which labored over the weekend to end the stalemate, said Tuesday he was "pretty confident" the Senate leadership and the White House would announce an agreement some time later in the day.

Speaking of the House, Pryor told CNN that "some Republicans are, quite honestly, they're acting childish about this. They almost want a shutdown. They almost want to see us break the debt ceiling."

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., also a part of the Gang of 12, told "CBS This Morning" she believes an agreement is near that "doesn't contain a lot of the partisan pills" that sank earlier proposals. She said it's urgent that national leaders find solutions to vexing issues so that the country doesn't "lurch from one financial crisis to another."

Many House conservatives were unhappy about the emerging framework, though it remained to be seen whether they would seek to change it.

"One of the things we want to test is just basic fairness," Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, an influential group of House conservatives, said on CNN Tuesday. He was asked how conservatives would respond to the plan taking shape in the Senate. "One of the things we don't want to see is just another patch," he said.

"We're willing to get the government open. We want to get the government open," Scalise said. "Hopefully they get something done that addresses the spending issue."

The developing plan is a far cry from the assault on "Obamacare" that tea party Republicans originally demanded as a condition for a short-term funding bill to keep the government fully operational. It lacks the budget cuts demanded by Republicans in exchange for increasing the government's $16.7 trillion borrowing cap.

Nor does the framework contain any of a secondary set of House GOP demands, like a one-year delay in the health law's mandate that individuals buy insurance. Instead, it appeared likely to tighten income verification requirements for individuals who qualify for Obamacare subsidies and may repeal a $63 fee that companies must pay for each person they cover under the big health care overhaul beginning in 2014.

Democratic and Republican aides described the outlines of the potential agreement on condition of anonymity because the discussions were ongoing.

But with GOP poll numbers plummeting and the country growing weary of a shutdown entering its third week, Senate Republicans in particular were eager to end the shutdown — and avoid an even greater crisis if the government were to default later this month.

Any legislation backed by both Reid and McConnell can be expected to sail through the Senate, though any individual senators could delay it.

But it's another story in the House, where it wasn't winning a lot of fans among conservatives.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, signaled that conservative members of the House were deeply skeptical. He said any bill had to have serious spending cuts for him to vote to raise the debt ceiling and said he thought Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had more flexibility than they had said publicly.

"No deal is better than a bad deal," Barton said.

Asked whether the emerging package contained any victories for Republicans, Rep. James Lankford, R-Okla., a member of the House GOP leadership, said, "Not that I've seen so far, no."

McConnell briefed House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, on Monday on the status of the Senate talks. Both House and Senate GOP leaders scheduled closed-door meetings of their respective memberships for Tuesday.

In addition to approving legislation to fund the government until late this year and avert a possible debt crisis later this week or month, the potential pact would set up broader budget negotiations between the GOP-controlled House and Democratic-led Senate. One goal of those talks would be to ease automatic spending cuts that began in March and could deepen in January, when about $20 billion in further cuts are set to slam the Pentagon.

Democrats were standing against a GOP-backed proposal to suspend a medical device tax that was enacted as part of the health care law.

Democrats also were seeking to preserve the Treasury Department's ability to use extraordinary accounting measures to buy additional time after the government reaches any extended debt ceiling. Such measures have permitted Treasury to avert a default for almost five months since the government officially hit the debt limit in mid-May, but wouldn't buy anywhere near that kind of time next year, experts said.

Some lawmakers are frustrated that defusing the immediate standoff simply sets up another fight next year.

"It's punting because no one, Democrats, Republicans wants to face up — and the American people — to the tough reality that we're in," said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. "It's all a temporary fix."

___

Associated Press writers Donna Cassata, David Espo, Henry C. Jackson and Alan Fram contributed to this report.