Do not let fear kill the promise of Big Data

Enticed by the promise of “discreet indiscretions”, millions of people sign up to a global website offering extramarital encounters. Last month, legions of those same people found their names, personal preferences and other intimate details sprayed most indiscreetly across the internet. This spectacular incident, the latest in an accelerating tally of hacks and leaks, forces us to take the measure of the rapid evolution of our data-driven world and the far-reaching impact on all our lives.

In July 2010 the first big data dump hit the headlines when WikiLeaks uploaded the Afghan War Diary — about 90,000 documents that constituted an unprecedented leak in US military history . Three years later, 20 times as many documents were published by Edward Snowden. There was a scandal within the scandal: the leak publicised activity such as surveillance of leaders including Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, by the US National Security Agency, where Mr Snowden had worked.

The story moved on from matters of state. In December 2013 Target, the US retailer and distribution chain, announced that the banking data of 110m clients had been stolen in a cyber attack. It was the largest ever theft of banking data . The next episode, in August 2014, focused on celebrities: the iCloud photo hack released hundreds of private images of entertainment stars. The storyline was picking up pace. In late 2014 an attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment — resulting in leaks of executives’ emails that created high-level political ructions — was part corporate warfare, part affair of state.

These attacks hit hard, but they hit primarily the powerful: institutions, governments, military and corporate leaders, celebrities and heads of state. Next came the Ashley Madison leak, however. This was the first such hack of people’s personal lives, exposing on a grand scale the data of ordinary users — and not just their banking passwords, either.

Big Data? Big problems. With each hack, leak, and act of piracy
and sabotage, we grow more aware that the performance of the new digital order is in direct proportion to its users’ confidence. Coincidentally, at the same time as the Ashley Madison crisis, Spotify decided in some countries to harvest — with users’ permission — information stored on their smartphones that had nothing to do with music: contacts, photos, multimedia files and so on. The decision, unsurprisingly, immediately unleashed a social media outcry against the music streaming service.

The questions raised by Big Data are of urgent importance to everyone. Privacy is at the heart of democratic modernity, and it must be preserved. The manipulation of the information we share with organisations online, increasingly extensive and sensitive in nature, makes digital processes a question of life (private life, certainly) and, potentially, death .

At the same time, Big Data analytics have been shown to have significant potential to benefit the common good: in the fields of health, science, research and security, among other examples.

At this moment of high tension about our online information, everyone involved must accept their responsibilities. We must ensure that fear does not restrain the great promise of Big Data.

Digital giants should take a self-regulatory approach — in terms, for example, of security, destruction and anonymisation of data. Their best practices would soon be adopted by every other keeper of digital information. The UK advertising industry’s voluntary code of good practice, which has struck a balance between regulation and innovation for decades, might serve as a model.

Now is the time to start, and those with the most influence — global digital companies to begin with — should tackle this problem, which is central to the trust of internet users and, in turn, to the very future of the digital world.

The writer is chairman and chief executive of Publicis Groupe