Not what was done, but why it was done

Facebook has taken a lot of criticism recently in the media -- enough that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg bought some very expensive full-page ads in newspapers across America to defend his company. He’s expected to testify before several U.S. Congressional committees; he has refused to testify to a British parliamentary investigation.

The problem, of course, is that about 87 million Facebook subscribers had their data hacked by Cambridge Analytica.

Subscribers have been cancelling in droves. Victoria’s mayor Lisa Helps made a public issue about shutting down her Facebook account. The hashtag #getoffFacebook has been getting almost as much exposure as #MeToo.

Facebook’s share values have plunged over 15 per cent.

Perhaps Facebook deserves its criticism; perhaps it doesn’t. But I think the critics have missed the point. They’ve concentrated on what’s called “data mining,” as if it were intrinsically wrong. They’ve focussed on what was done, not why it was done.

I contend that there is nothing wrong with data mining itself.

Data mining is not new. Google does it to make sure you get the answers you’re looking for. Air Miles does it to track your purchasing habits. Every political party does it, to target potential supporters. Facebook itself does it, to identify potential “friends” for you.

Even the traditional academic dissertation is a form of data mining. Few students get to do original research. Mostly, they comb through existing information, connecting diverse threads and assembling a credible body of knowledge.

In my university days, we gathered our data on 3x5 file cards. Cambridge Analytica used sophistical search algorithms. They’re both a form of data mining.

The difference is the purpose for which the data is used.

Indeed, the B.C. government recently endorsed data mining. Health Minister Adrian Dix granted $10 million to a firm called Therapeutics Initiative, to research whether new medications perform as well in real life as their manufacturers claim they did in clinical trials.

As the Victoria Times Colonist editorialized, “The B.C. Health Ministry possesses one of the largest medical-data archives in the world, with tens of millions of files reaching back 25 years.”

Combined with data from a variety of health agencies, such a study could define beyond question the effectiveness of the increasingly expensive drugs now available for treatment.

The federal Health Ministry must approve every drug offered for sale in Canada. But it doesn’t deal with effectiveness. It cares only whether a new drug is safe. It doesn’t deal with affordability or availability.

“Some [new drugs] can be lifesaving,” wrote the Times Colonist. “Others might be no better than existing drugs that are much cheaper.

“And here industry sales tactics come into play. There are about 600 representatives of drug firms in B.C., whose job is to encourage physicians to prescribe their product. Therapeutics Initiative has a staff of less than 30. The [Health] ministry can overcome that mismatch only if it brings its unique database to bear.

“Facts will speak louder than sales pitches.” The difference between the data mining done by Cambridge Analytica and Therapeutics Initiative is not the means but the end. One was intended to benefit a limited few; the other, to benefit the many.

Cambridge Analytica’s data mining furthered the causes of a few, very rich, and very conservative owners. Its parent company, the SCL Group, is partly owned by the family of American hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer, a major funder for rightwing political organizations. Also by Steve Bannon, former executive chair of the rightwing Breitbart News, and a key strategist in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Despite much of the media hoopla, this is not about the invasion of personal privacy. In the cyber world, there’s no such thing. If you post it to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or whatever, you have made it public. Period.

Besides, the Facebook users who got hacked had signed onto a digital app which specifically authorized the program to access their information.

And if I read the fine print in Facebook’s sign-up correctly, anything you post now belongs to Facebook, not to you.

So it was not personal privacy being raided. It was corporate privacy. A much more serious offence, it would seem.

It’s the purpose that needs to be examined, not the process.

Cambridge Analytic did its data mining to defraud, to deceive, and to manipulate people -- without their permission or knowledge. The data mining of B.C. medical histories is to save lives by making treatment more effective, regardless of a patient’s political affiliation or wealth. Same process; huge difference. Jim Taylor is an Okanagan Centre author and freelance journalist. He can be reached at rewrite@shaw.ca