Analysis: Public awareness is key to living with Big Data
Saturday June 15, 2013, 11:48 PM
BY DAVE SHEINGOLD
STAFF WRITER
The Record
Head into a bank lobby and withdraw money from an ATM, or send a text on a cellphone. Log on to a computer to search profiles on social media, pay a bill, renew a car registration, or reserve a library book. Turn on a GPS device to help drive from one place to another.
Few people give much thought to what happens to the personal information left behind by such routine tasks, even though it’s all collected, stored — and at times shared — contributing to a towering mountain of data about people and their habits.
In recent days, that’s all changed. In a dizzying series of revelations, it became known that the federal government is mining chunks of that mountain in the name of national security, casting a light onto the world that’s known as Big Data and raising questions about who has access to it and how it is used.
Government officials are stressing that the National Security Agency’s previously secret program to analyze data about cellphone use and Internet activity is narrowly tailored to identify potential terrorists and other threats.
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