Mining 071014

Everyone in the world now knows the good guys at NSA have validated Orwell's prophecy of "Big Brother" by collecting everything on everyone.  With NSA's computers overflowing, this data is open to evil Chinese hackers data mining for their own nefarious purposes.  Not to be confused with the pristine data exploitation motives of businesses, bureaucratic and criminal miners.

Governments have been quick to assure the world that all your secrets are safe, just trust them with a little more information.  Of course you can trust governments, after all have they every misled their own people?

Back in the days of early computing you could lock up your five and a quarter inch disk at the end of the day and feel your files were safe from prying eyes.  Then came the Internet for the free exchange of information between trusted colleagues.  It was discovered that the open door swung both ways as an invitation to enter individuals' computers.  As the information age matured there were millions of computers to be exploited.  This presented a daunting problem for miners, how to find exploitable data when information was scattered around the globe.  Small companies made vast fortunes as data consolidators building massive files of individual's personal information for sale to marketers and anyone else that wanted access, whatever their purposes.

Where did all this data come from? It unknowingly came directly from individuals who freely surrendered all the intimate details of their lives to banks, businesses, governments, pollsters and opinion surveys. Imprisoned felons are even contracted to collect information. The thing about building a database is that there is always room for more data so collection expands, delving deeper and deeper into your life.  Data miners soon discovered there was still an untapped pool of information and began to build clouds somewhere out in the ether where people now park details of their lives from mail, diaries, finances, photos and even fleeting thoughts.  Social media has become entertainment where rhetorical nonsense and bad jokes are linked to individuals for eternity by miners seeking leverage.

Your data is international, as much of the collection has migrated offshore.  Domestic and foreign miners now interrupt dinners with cold calls seeking details on friends, neighbors even long lost relatives.  These calls result in spurious links leading to things like identify theft or records as "known criminal associates."

Miners exploitation leads to GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) targeting individuals for marketing, robbery or government intense surveillance.  Private satellites now look down on back yards and a neighbor's nude sunbathing may link you to lewd and licentious behavior of a possible sex offender. 

The data never goes away or corrected once it is out there.  In the 25th century a distant miner relative may happen to dig out that bit of data on the ancient black sheep of the family.  Who is watching you read this right now?