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Do Not Track

A personalized documentary series about privacy and the web economy.

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E3 - Social Networks Must Read

Why Facebook is beating the FBI at facial recognition

The FBI is getting set to deploy its own system of computerized facial recognition, called NGI. It will bring together millions of photos in a central federal database, reaching all 50 states by the end of the year.

But compared with Facebook’s DeepFace system it isn’t very good. Give Facebook two pictures, and it can tell you with 97 percent accuracy whether they’re the same person, roughly the same accuracy as a human being in the same spot. To be fair, Facebook has a whole network’s worth of data on its side.

The nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency is getting outgunned by a social network.

— Read on theverge.com
E5 - Big Data Must Read

Dragnet Nation – Julia Angwin

In this thought-provoking, highly accessible exploration of the issues around personal data-gathering, Julia Angwin provides a startling account of how we’re all being tracked, watched, studied, and sorted. Her own (often very funny) attempts to maintain her online privacy demonstrate the ubiquity of the dragnet—and the near impossibility of evading it. I’ll never use Google in the same way again.”
—Gretchen Rubin, bestselling author of Happier at Home and The Happiness Project

— Read on juliaangwin.com
E3 - Social Networks Must Read

Facebook Could Decide an Election—Without You Ever Finding Out

“Digital gerrymandering” represents a frightening future. Here’s how to prevent it.

On November 2, 2010, Facebook’s American users were subject to an ambitious experiment in civic-engineering: Could a social network get otherwise-indolent people to cast a ballot in that day’s congressional midterm elections?

The answer was yes.

— Read on newrepublic.com
E5 - Big Data Must Read

BBC “Virtual Revolution” – Episode 3 : The cost of free

In the 3rd episode of this four-part series, Dr Aleks Krotoski gives the lowdown on how commerce has colonised the web and reveals how web users are paying for what appear to be ‘free’ sites and services in hidden ways. She is joined by some of the most influential business leaders of today’s web, including Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon), Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google), Chad Hurley (CEO of YouTube), Bill Gates, Martha Lane Fox and Reed Hastings (CEO of Netflix).

Aleks Krotoski also explores how web advertising is evolving further to become more targeted and what this may mean for our notions of privacy.

E2 - Cookies Must Read

Meet The Real-Life Tracking Database That Could Include You

Cookies are tracking our online behavior for advertising purposes, but a company specializing in retail analytics called Euclid, Inc. is moving that concept into real world shopping experiences.

Euclid uses open WiFi access points to track shopper behavior across stores: It does this by collecting the MAC address of smart phones as they passively connect to open networks while people shop, anonymizing the data, putting it into a giant database that then recognizes the device when it goes near any other Euclid customer’s network.

— Read on thinkprogress.org
E5 - Big Data Must Read

Acxiom, the Quiet Giant of Consumer Database Marketing

Few consumers may have heard of Acxiom, a database marketer. But it has amassed the world’s largest commercial data trove about them.

In a fast-changing digital economy, Acxiom is developing even more advanced techniques to mine and refine data and to predict consumer behavior.

Federal authorities say current laws may not be equipped to handle the rapid expansion of an industry whose players often collect and sell sensitive financial and health information yet are nearly invisible to the public.

— Read on The New York Times
E3 - Social Networks Must Read

What You Look Like to a Social Network

This infographic presents the categories of information that social networks can make available to other applications. You authorize these applications by, say, logging in to a Web site with your Twitter account, or by playing Farmville on Facebook. The applications, in turn, often give data about your activities back to the social network. These exchanges of information take place through what’s known as an application programming interface, or an A.P.I..

— Read on The New Yorker
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