Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, Preserving Values
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Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, BIG DATA: Executive Office of the President SEIZING OPPORTUNITIES, PRESERVING VALUES Executive Office of the President MAY 2014 May 1, 2014 DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: We are living in the midst of a social, economic, and technological revolution. How we com- municate, socialize, spend leisure time, and conduct business has moved onto the Internet. The Internet has in turn moved into our phones, into devices spreading around our homes and cities, and into the factories that power the industrial economy. The resulting explosion of data and discovery is changing our world. In January, you asked us to conduct a 90-day study to examine how big data will transform the way we live and work and alter the relationships between government, citizens, businesses, and consumers. This review focuses on how the public and private sectors can maximize the bene- fits of big data while minimizing its risks. It also identifies opportunities for big data to grow our economy, improve health and education, and make our nation safer and more energy efficient. While big data unquestionably increases the potential of government power to accrue un- checked, it also hold within it solutions that can enhance accountability, privacy, and the rights of citizens. Properly implemented, big data will become an historic driver of progress, helping our nation perpetuate the civic and economic dynamism that has long been its hallmark. Big data technologies will be transformative in every sphere of life. The knowledge discovery they make possible raises considerable questions about how our framework for privacy protec- tion applies in a big data ecosystem. Big data also raises other concerns. A significant finding of this report is that big data analytics have the potential to eclipse longstanding civil rights protec- tions in how personal information is used in housing, credit, employment, health, education, and the marketplace. Americans’ relationship with data should expand, not diminish, their opportuni- ties and potential. We are building the future we will inherit. The United States is better suited than any nation on earth to ensure the digital revolution continues to work for individual empowerment and social good. We are pleased to present this report’s recommendations on how we can embrace big data technologies while at the same time protecting fundamental values like privacy, fairness, and self-determination. We are committed to the initiatives and reforms it proposes. The dia- logue we set in motion today will help us remain true to our values even as big data reshapes the world around us. JOHN PODESTA PENNY PRITZKER ERNEST J. MONIZ Counselor to the President Secretary of Commerce Secretary of Energy JOHN HOLDREN JEFFREY ZIENTS Director, Office of Science & Technology Policy Director, National Economic Council BIG DATA: SEIZING OPPORTUNITIES, PRESERVING VALUES Table of Contents Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... v I. Big Data and the Individual ...................................................................................................... 1 What is Big Data? ................................................................................................................ 1 What is Different about Big Data? ..................................................................................... 4 Affirming our Values ............................................................................................................ 9 II. The Obama Administration's Approach to Open Data and Privacy ................................ 11 Open Data in the Obama Administration ........................................................................ 12 U.S. Privacy Law and International Privacy Frameworks ............................................ 15 III. Public Sector Management of Data .................................................................................... 22 Big Data and Health Care Delivery ................................................................................. 22 Learning about Learning: Big Data and Education ....................................................... 24 Big Data at the Department of Homeland Security ....................................................... 27 Upholding our Privacy Values in Law Enforcement ...................................................... 29 Implications of Big Data Technology for Privacy Law .................................................. 32 IV. Private Sector Management of Data .................................................................................. 39 Big Data Benefits for Enterprise and Consumer ........................................................... 39 The Advertising-Supported Ecosystem .......................................................................... 40 The Data Services Sector ................................................................................................. 43 V. Toward a Policy Framework for Big Data ........................................................................... 48 Big Data and the Citizen ................................................................................................... 49 Big Data and the Consumer ............................................................................................. 50 Big Data and Discrimination ............................................................................................. 51 Big Data and Privacy ......................................................................................................... 53 Anticipating the Big Data Revolution’s Next Chapter ................................................... 55 VI. Conclusion and Recommendations .................................................................................... 58 1. Preserving Privacy Values ....................................................................................... 61 2. Responsible Educational Innovation in the Digital Age ....................................... 63 3. Big Data and Discrimination .................................................................................... 64 4. Law Enforcement and Security ............................................................................... 66 5. Data as a Public Resource ...................................................................................... 67 Appendix ....................................................................................................................................... 69 v BIG DATA: SEIZING OPPORTUNITIES, PRESERVING VALUES BIG DATA: SEIZING OPPORTUNITIES, PRESERVING VALUES I. Big Data and the Individual What is Big Data? Since the first censuses were taken and crop yields recorded in ancient times, data col- lection and analysis have been essential to improving the functioning of society. Founda- tional work in calculus, probability theory, and statistics in the 17th and 18th centuries provided an array of new tools used by scientists to more precisely predict the move- ments of the sun and stars and determine population-wide rates of crime, marriage, and suicide. These tools often led to stunning advances. In the 1800s, Dr. John Snow used early modern data science to map cholera “clusters” in London. By tracing to a contami- nated public well a disease that was widely thought to be caused by “miasmatic” air, Snow helped lay the foundation for the germ theory of disease.1 Gleaning insights from data to boost economic activity also took hold in American indus- try. Frederick Winslow Taylor’s use of a stopwatch and a clipboard to analyze productivi- ty at Midvale Steel Works in Pennsylvania increased output on the shop floor and fueled his belief that data science could revolutionize every aspect of life.2 In 1911, Taylor wrote The Principles of Scientific Management to answer President Theodore Roosevelt’s call for increasing “national efficiency”: [T]he fundamental principles of scientific management are applicable to all kinds of human activities, from our simplest individual acts to the work of our great cor- porations…. [W]henever these principles are correctly applied, results must fol- low which are truly astounding.3 Today, data is more deeply woven into the fabric of our lives than ever before. We aspire to use data to solve problems, improve well-being, and generate economic prosperity. The collection, storage, and analysis of data is on an upward and seemingly unbounded trajectory, fueled by increases in processing power, the cratering costs of computation and storage, and the growing number of sensor technologies embedded in devices of all kinds. In 2011, some estimated the amount of information created and replicated would 1 Scott Crosier, John Snow: The London Cholera Epidemic of 1854, Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2007, http://www.csiss.org/classics/content/8. 2 Simon Head, The New Ruthless Economy: Work and Power in the Digital Age, (Oxford University Press, 2005). 3 Frederick Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (Harper & Brothers, 1911), p. 7, http://www.eldritchpress.org/fwt/ti.html. 1 BIG DATA: SEIZING OPPORTUNITIES, PRESERVING VALUES surpass 1.8 zettabytes.4 In 2013, estimates reached 4 zettabytes of data generated worldwide.5 What is a Zettabyte? A zettabyte is 1,000 000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes, or units of information. Consider that a single byte equals one character of text. The 1,250