Only a few years ago, the idea that for-profit companies and foreign agents could use powerful data technologies to disrupt American democracy would have seemed laughable to most, a plotline from a Cold War espionage movie. …
The heart of Cambridge Analytica’s power is an enormous information warehouse — as many as 5,000 data points on each of more than 230 million Americans, according to recent reporting, a fact the company proudly confirms on its website. Its promise of elections driven by data ultimately implies a vision of government steered not by people but by algorithms, and by an expanding data-mining culture operating without restrictions.
That such threats to democracy are now possible is due in part to the fact that our society lacks an information ethics adequate to its deepening dependence on data. Where politics is driven by data, we need an ethics to guide that data. But in our rush to deliver on the promises of Big Data, we have not sought one. CONT.
Colin Koopman (U. of Oregon), New York Times